


The Love Song of Edward T. Kaspbrak

by bellatrixblacke



Category: IT (1990), IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Gore, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Twenty-Seven Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-04-07 14:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14082504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatrixblacke/pseuds/bellatrixblacke
Summary: "What do you know about Words, Eddie?" Sonia asked.He reeled back at her question, shocked. What in the Lord's name did words have to do with his mother's untimely death? "Words? Well, they're what we speak, and what we write, and-""No, no, not just ordinary words, Eddie," she interrupted him, slightly exasperated. "Words, a person's Words."Eddie frowned. "A person's words? Like... Like their name?"Eddie had no idea where his mother was getting at, but he looked at her, saw her wringing hands and the crease on her forehead, and suddenly knew he was about to learn something important."Not their name, Eddie, no," she explained. "The Words of their soulmate's song."-Soulmate!AU in which lyrics to your soulmate's favorite song appear on your skin.





	1. 1989

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is my indulgence in two of my favourite things: soulmate AUs and 80s music.
> 
> I took elements from both book and movie canon, though the timeline, for obvious reasons, follows the movie's. 
> 
> The title is a reference to [The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock) by T. S. Eliot, one of my favourite poems. I read somewhere Eddie's middle name was Turner, which might have been fanon information, but I'm going with it.
> 
> I've made a playlist of all of the songs included in the story, which you can find [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/bzbrit/playlist/7u2shAJmncZDe7PW3BiBYf). Listen as you read, or wait until the end if you don't want spoilers.

 

_I’m kissing you now—across the gap of a thousand years._

Marina Tsvetaeva  
 

 _swollen with words you never said, swollen with hoarded love  
_ _I exist in two places, here and where you are._

Margaret Atwood

 

* * *

 

 

The first time Eddie Kaspbrak heard about Words, he was six years old.

His Ma was very concerned about his health - he was a frail, delicate boy, or so she told him. Eddie had more medicine in his kitchen cabinet than toys in the chest by his bed, and trips to the hospital were more frequent than trips to the zoo. All in all, health issues were always at the forefront of his mind, growing up.

So one day, when he caught his mother changing out of her pajamas, arms raised high pulling her shirt off and revealing a black strip stuck on her mid-back like some sort of nefarious gauze, he was obviously scared. What if she had a terrible skin disease? What if it was contagious? Was that why she worried so much about Eddie's health, even though he felt fine most of the time?

He quietly entered her room, which he was passing by on his way to the bathroom when he glimpsed at his mother through a slight opening of the door. "What's that, Ma?" he asked, pointing at the mystifying piece of tape clinging to her back.

Sonia Kaspbrak startled, dropping the top of her pajama on the floor and turning around to face her son. The movement didn't hide the binding on her rear; Eddie could still see it reflected on her vanity mirror.

"Jesus, Eddie, don't you knock?" she exclaimed. Quickly, she reached for a pale pink blouse that was lying on top of her bed and put it on, but it mattered little to Eddie. The image of his mother's large back and the narrow strip that partially covered it was already imprinted on his mind, which ran wild with theories to explain it.

"Sorry, the door was open," he replied, not very sorry at all - morbid curiosity overcame every other feeling he could possibly have at that moment. "What's that thing on your back?" he asked again, in fear she would just change the subject and leave him in the terror of not knowing. Considering the theories his brain had come up with in the brief span of time ranged from rare disease to alien abduction, he would much rather she told him the truth. 

His mother's eyes darted from one corner of the room to another, and she looked as though she was trying to figure out a way to bypass Eddie and get out the door, ignoring him and the conversation altogether. But, after what appeared to be a quick inner discussion with herself, she seemed to deflate, and slowly sat down on her bed. 

Eddie had the impression that everything his mother did was in slow-motion: she would walk up the stairs a single step at a time, and talk in a dull monotone, and even shout at Eddie, which she did pretty often, at a sluggish pace. The faster Eddie wanted to go, the slower she went, as was the case now. She sighed heavily - even her breathing was slow - and petted her bed three times, beckoning Eddie to sit beside her. He did so, eyes wide and ears perched, ready for her to tell him she had been severely bitten by a flesh-eating spider, and was bound to be pushing daisies anytime between now and next Thursday. 

"What do you know about Words, Eddie?" Sonia asked.

He reeled back at her question, shocked. What in the Lord's name did words have to do with his mother's untimely death? "Words? Well, they're what we speak, and what we write, and-"

"No, no, not just ordinary words, Eddie," she interrupted him, slightly exasperated. " _Words_ , a person's Words."

Eddie frowned. "A person's words? Like... Like their name?" 

Eddie had no idea where his mother was getting at, but he looked at her, saw her wringing hands and the crease on her forehead, and suddenly knew he was about to learn something important. She had acted much the same way only a few months ago, on a rainy day in October when she sat Eddie down to tell him his father had died. He had a moment to think maybe _she_ had already died herself, an incurable skin disease taking her silently, and had come back as a ghost only for a moment to kindly inform Eddie of her passing. But he easily shook the thought away, because ghosts were translucent, and couldn't sit on beds.

"Not their name, Eddie, no," she explained. "The Words of their soulmate's song."

Eddie had heard of soulmates once or twice before. He heard it in passing on the TV while his mother watched romance movies, and once from Suzy Parish. Suzy was a feisty girl one year above Eddie, and last year she had declared very loudly to the whole school during lunch that Steve Warlow, also a year above Eddie, was her soulmate. She had spent lunch period that day holding Steve's hand, and Steve had looked queasy, but Suzy just smiled dopily at him, like the people in romance movies. 

Eddie didn't know much about soulmates, but he knew one thing: they were Love Things. He had no idea what a soulmate song was supposed to be, however, so he frowned at his mother, still in the dark about how a Love Thing could be connected to his original question.

Sonia Kaspbrak resigned herself that it was time to give her son The Talk, and began: 

"When you grow up, Eddie-bear, you get a mark somewhere on your body. It's completely natural, you see - everyone gets it. They are your Words, and they are put there by your soulmate, the person who loves you most in the world."

"Are you my soulmate, Ma?"

Eddie's mother beamed at him, pleased that he would think she was. In all actuality, Eddie simply didn't know anyone else who loved him. His father might have, maybe, but he was dead now. He had a couple of friends in school, but he was sure they didn't love him, and that was okay, because he didn't love them either. They always wanted Eddie to play with them in the sandpit, or dirty ground; they didn't understand Eddie couldn't do those things, that he was too sick and that playing in filth, as his mother called it, would only make him worse.

"No, honey, I'm not," his mom softly continued. Her smile faded and she looked away, her gaze seemingly beyond Eddie, beyond the walls of her room. "I was your dad's soulmate, and he was mine."

Eddie's mother was making the same face she made whenever she watched her romance movies. It was sort of like the face you make when smelling baked cookies from the kitchen while you're on the living room: like you know there's something good waiting for you, and it's just around the corner. Somehow, Eddie finally understood that that look was, too, a Love Thing.

"What's a soulmate song?" he asked his mom.

"It's your soulmate's favorite song, and it's what they mark you with. That's why we hide our Words with tape like mine, sweetie. It's how we're able to find The One, because they know our Words, even though they're hidden from everyone."

Eddie tried hard to think of what his favorite song was, but all he could come up with was "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". He had vague memories of his mom singing it to him, brushing his hair with her hand and slowly (all she did was slow) lulling him to sleep. That was before Eddie's father's death, before their nightly ritual turned into her taking Eddie's temperature and complaining that he was too hot, then putting two blankets on top of him anyway. It was a good song, but he hoped deep inside it wasn't his favorite - he wanted a song that was his own, not one shared with his mother. Although the thought made him feel guilty, he couldn't help it; he loved her, but at times she suffocated him as much as the stuffy blankets he slept under.

Though the fear was gone, curiosity still overwhelmed Eddie, and he felt he wouldn't truly believe his mother's story until he could see her mark for himself, touch it with his fingers. It didn't even cross his mind how intimate a thing it was to see another person's Words. Back in the day you only showed them to your spouse, usually on your wedding night (which could make for very awkward nuptials if you turned out not to have married your soulmate). Currently the taboo had been somewhat broken, and now it was not uncommon for people to show each other their Words if they were relatively sure they were each other's soulmates. It was mostly still a gamble, so you could end up sharing your most private secret with a few people before you got it right (if you ever did), but the process was still all very hush-hush. Kids definitely weren't usually shown them, for they didn't have them - getting your Words marked the beginning of puberty. Eddie of course didn't know any of that, so it felt very natural for him to ask his mother:

"Can I see your Words?" Eddie was already reaching towards her, prepared to lift her blouse and rip away the black tape himself if he had to.

Sonia flinched, coiling away from her son's hand, a lifetime of modesty holding her back. After a second or two, however, she seemed to change her mind. She turned away from Eddie on the bed, exposing her back to him, and moved the hem of her shirt a bit upward, just enough so she could pull her Word Tape off.

It was the first time Eddie had ever seen someone's Words (the next time he did he would be thirteen years old - they had all been thirteen then), so he didn't know what to expect. If he had expected anything, though, it would have been something much like what he was seeing now.

His mother's mark was not long - only two lines - though it was wide. It spanned from one extreme to the other of her mid-back, just above the dip at the end of her spine. The Words themselves were written in black, and if you got creative you could say they were nothing but a weirdly-shaped mole. The calligraphy was small, yet strong; kind of what letters looked like in a typewriter, but neater. They combined to form the two sentences:

 _The time to hesitate is through  
_ _No time to wallow in the mire_

Eddie extended his arm again, not stopping this time until he touched his mother's Words. She jumped at the first contact, even though Eddie's fingers weren't cold. Slowly, gently, like his mother did when she pet his hair on nights long gone, Eddie caressed the mark. He still wasn't very good at reading, and there were words there he was sure he didn't know, but he had a feeling he had heard this song before. He told so to his mother, and she gave a sudden bark of laughter, her body jiggling under Eddie's fingers.

"It's "Light My Fire" by The Doors. Your father used to play that song all the time around the house. He really did love it," she said, as if to assure Eddie of the fact that she and Eddie's father truly were soulmates.

"What song did you put on dad?" Eddie asked, fingers roaming freely on his mom's skin, drawing random patterns. 

Sonia blushed. "Pretty Woman," she said.

Eddie knew that song as well. He didn't think he had heard it as much as "Light My Fire", but maybe a few times, while his mother washed the dishes, or swept the floors. He suddenly realized he hadn't heard either of those songs in quite a while.

He felt a wave of sadness for his mother flow through him. His Ma, who would never again be able to listen to her favorite song (or even the song forever branded on her skin, for that matter) without being reminded of all she'd lost. He impulsively leaned forward and pressed a kiss on his mom's mark, wanting to express his love for her in some way, to make her feel good about her Words for what might have been the first time since his father's death.

Eddie didn't remember much about his father, the gap he left in their lives so recent yet already so hazy. He missed going out to play in the park, where his dad took him but his mom didn't, and he missed how often his mom used to smile. But he didn't exactly miss his dad, and his loss didn't affect him as much as it did his mom. Now, watching her shed a discreet tear and wipe it away with the palm of her hand, Eddie thought it might be better not to remember at all than to feel such a loss.

 

* * *

 

Seven years passed after that conversation with his mom and his consequent discovery of Words and soulmate songs before Eddie was once again faced with the topic.

Namely, when Richie was the first among the Losers to get his Words.

Eddie believed that if a boy ever did not need the ego boost given by receiving his soulmark first in a group of friends, that boy was Richie fucking Tozier, but life was like that sometimes. So when Richie sat down one day during their shared lunch period wearing a black cotton wristband and a smug grin, Eddie knew life had Got Off a Good One on them all, as Richie himself used to say.

"Yes, yes, my dear fellows, it does appear it is I who is the man among us", Richie proclaimed in one of his Voices. Maybe it was the Southern Gent, or the British Butler, it didn't matter; they all just sounded like variations on Richie Tozier anyway. He spread his hands on the cafeteria table so Bill, Stan and Eddie could not miss his new accessory.

"Shut the fuck up, Richie." Stan rolled his eyes as he unwrapped his meticulously prepared lunch. "So you got your Words, big deal. You still sleep in your Care Bears pajamas, you're hardly a man," he said.

Eddie laughed, though it was mostly to make Stan feel better. He knew his friend had been going through a rough patch, what with all the stress of learning his Torah readings, and felt like he could use the confidence boost of landing a successful chuck.

"Stanny my boy, we all know you've got your panties in a twist because your Barney Tees Van is in less than a month and you still haven't got _your_ Words..." Richie pushed his Coke-bottle glasses up his nose and puffed out his chest. "It's okay, when you reach my level of maturity you'll learn to respect your elders."

Stan rolled his eyes again. "It's called a _bar mitzvah_ , and that's got nothing to do with it!" he said. "Though I have no idea why it would turn me into a man when we all know your Words are what really count," he continued in a murmur, his hand immediately going to his kippah as if to make sure it hadn't fallen off in disgrace after hearing his speech.

"There's a n-neat puh-party involved though, so d-don't c-c-complain. And congrats on g-getting your Wu-words, R-R-Richie", Bill added.

"Are you gonna show us what they are?" Eddie asked casually, biting on his tuna sandwich and looking askance at Richie's wrist.

By now Eddie knew you never showed your Words in public, of course. But he ignored the part of his brain that provided him with that piece of information, because there was a much bigger part that was incredibly curious as to what the song on Richie's arm was.

He knew he wasn't the only one; Bill and Stan were also doing a lousy job of eating while pretending they weren't staring at their friend, eyes involuntarily drawn to Richie's arm whenever he gesticulated wildly as he spoke (he wasn't doing it on purpose, trying to attract attention to his new mark - he simply got way too excited whenever someone was paying attention to him). Somehow, though, Eddie believed no one in their table felt exactly what he felt when looking at that taunting black wristband.

It was an itching all over his body, combined with a knowledge deep in his heart that he would go crazy if he didn't look, just a little, just once.

Richie was so shameless that Eddie thought for a moment there was a real chance of him actually doing it. He could see it clearly in his mind's eye: the boy in front of him reaching forward with his left hand, rolling out the cotton strip he wore on his opposite side and exposing himself right then and there, in front of the whole school. He took his inhaler in hand and triggered it down his throat, the movement serving to disguise his full-body shiver.

His ridiculous reverie was interrupted as Richie grabbed his own wrist, the one covered with the armband, and held it protectively to his chest. "By Jove, Eddie Spaghetti!" he said, looking over-dramatically shocked. It was definitely the Southern Belle Voice he used now, "A respectable girl like myself doesn't kiss and tell, sweet pie."

"Most you've ever kissed was your inner elbow, Trashmouth," Eddie replied, scowling though he knew, for his own mortification, that he was blushing. Richie made kissing faces at him, and Eddie flipped him the bird.

Stan would end up getting his own Words not two weeks later, to his relief and Richie's disappointment ("What was that thing you said about being a man, Richie?" "Bite me, Staniel."). He told the boys one smothering June afternoon while they were at Eddie's house reading funny books. He had to come out and tell them because his Words were a bit hidden: they sat on his left collarbone and Stan always wore button-up shirts that hid his whole chest, the last button done just below his neck. Eddie supposed they would find out sooner or later, if they ever decided to go for a swim at the Barrens and Stan had to take his shirt off, but it was nice of Stan to tell them beforehand. This time, no one asked him to share what the Words said, and he didn't volunteer to share.

 

* * *

  

The day school let out for the summer, the four boys found themselves in the alley between Mr. Keene's drugstore and the Aladdin theater, helping Ben Hanscom hide from the Bowers gang.

The punks had done quite a number on the poor kid over by the quarry, where the group first met him. Ben was limping, his face marred by cuts and scrapes, though the worst injury seemed to be on his stomach. His torn shirt was halfway soaked with blood, but he kept clutching at his wound, refusing to let Eddie take a look at it until they had reached the pharmacy. Eddie guessed it was because he was ashamed of his big belly, but when they finally stopped at the alleyway, gathering money between them to pay for the materials to fix him up, Ben timidly confessed the true reason for his modesty: his Words were placed on his stomach.

Bill, Stan and Eddie promised to buy some Word Tape to hide his mark, along with the necessary medical supplies. The three headed for the pharmacy, leaving behind a blushing Ben at the mercy of Richie Trashmouth Tozier. The last thing they heard before going inside was "Betcha can fit a whole song in there, huh, Haystack?" 

The boys (mostly Eddie, because he knew the most about that kind of stuff) gathered everything they needed to patch Ben up, until the only remaining item was the Word Tape. They turned a corner into an aisle signaled "GIFT CARDS/INTIMATE CARE", and bumped straight into Beverly Marsh.

She was standing in front of the section of the shelves that held the many varieties of tape sold for the specific purpose of concealing soulmate marks. Most of them were the standard black rectangle adhesives - small, medium, large or extra large - though there were a few with funny shapes, like a heart or red lips, and even a couple of patterned ones, with superheroes on them, or Hello Kitty (those last ones mostly used by teens who had just gotten their marks). Beverly had a box of plain black ones in her hand. Her bright red hair was tied in a loose ponytail and she wore a long-sleeved shirt, even though summer had already hit Derry in full strength.

They all startled at seeing each other, and Beverly almost dropped her box of Word Tape. Bill steadied her hand just in time, holding onto it even after the box was safe from falling. Beverly seemed dazed for a second, gaping at Bill without blinking like his touch had charmed her into a statue. Then her gaze moved from Bill's eyes to her own covered arms, and she pulled her hand back as if burned. The same fire must have hit Bill as well, for his cheeks were blazing red. 

Eddie squeezed between the two of them and the shelves, grabbing a box of tape (plain, extra large) and placing it on top of his precariously held bundle of emergency first aid.

"Cold today, isn't it, Beverly? I almost wore my snowpants myself," Stan said, poking fun at her incongruous choice of outfit.

She ignored him and turned to Eddie instead. "What's all that for?" she asked, previous embarrassment at being caught buying soulmark tape (or whatever else it had been that caused her to freeze up) already forgotten.

Eddie looked at Bill, deferring to him the choice of either telling her or keeping their little adventure amongst themselves. 

Bill threw a small half-smile at Eddie and answered Bev himself. "B-B-Ben Hanscom's outs-side duh-dying and we have to h-h-help him."

He apparently had no qualms letting Bev in on their plan, and Eddie found he didn't either. It felt right to share this with her, as if she was meant to be a part of it all along. She oddly bristled at the mention of Ben, but volunteered to go out back with them and assist with whatever needed. She left the pharmacy with their group and, passing through the threshold of the store together, she became one of them too.

Back at the alley, Ben and Richie were having an enthusiastic discussion of the latest creature feature they had watched at the Aladdin. Ben sat on an upturned soapbox, and while he still loosely grasped at his mangled stomach, he looked almost comfortable. The moment he saw Bev approaching, however, his whole demeanor changed: his back straightened, his head bowed, and his hand clutched so hard at his tummy that his knuckles turned white.

"H-Hey, Beverly!" he managed to squeak out in a thin voice.

She also seemed to have been affected by his presence, shier even more so than when she and Bill touched hands at the drugstore. Pushing behind her ear a hair strand which had escaped the ponytail, she replied, "Hi, Ben. Are you all right?"

"Yup, fine! You don't need to worry, really. Just a couple of scrapes."

Richie looked at him like he was a madman. "No need to sugar coat it for Miss Marsh here, Benny boy!" He turned to Bev and fake-whispered at her in his 1920s Newspaper Boy Voice, "Poor lad was damn neah kickin' the bucket when we found 'im, 'e was."

"All right, are we gonna do this or what?" Eddie moved forward, stepping in front of Ben and handing him the box of tape. "Put this on so I can take a look at your cut, would you?" 

The five turned around to give Ben some privacy while he placed the adhesive onto his soulmark; it was hard to know who was blushing the deepest, Ben or Bev. After a moment, Ben announced it was okay to turn back so they did, all eyes falling on Ben's now exposed stomach.

On its left side, black tape covered it almost entirely, from ribs to hip (probably an oversize issue on Eddie's part, but he felt better erring on the side of caution); on the right, a huge letter H was carved, the blood around it starting to clot. Eddie went straight to work while the others stood around them, offering support mostly in the form of the occasional wince or tiny gasp. 

Eddie made fastidious work on disinfecting and cleaning the wound, and finished up by adding a white gauze on top of it for protection. Ben's stomach now was completely hidden, split in the middle by two different covers, the black and white materials contrasting in more ways than one. While on one side Ben had his Words, the ultimate mark of love, on the other he would now have another mark, another constant reminder of powerful human emotion, but this one made by pure hatred. Ben pulled his shirt down and hid them both away. 

"Do you think..." Bev started, but stopped herself mid-sentence. Her face was contorted, as if the rest of her thought had stuck in her tongue and left a bad taste in her mouth. "Do you think Bowers would've cut your Words out?"

Ben, who up until now still had the remnants of a blush covering his cheeks, paled at the question. Everyone else looked queasy as well at the thought of such a monstrous act. Without really noticing they were doing it, Richie's hand went to his opposite wrist, Stan's to his breastbone.

"I think so, yes," Ben murmured.

The Losers' Club had each had their own unpleasant, to put it mildly, confrontations with Henry Bowers in the past, so no one disagreed with Ben that the boy was indeed capable of doing it. A long stretch of silence followed as the group tried, and failed horribly, not to imagine what it would be like not to have your Words ripped from you. Even Eddie, who still hadn't got his own in the first place, knew how depressing that was to consider. No sure-fire way to find your soulmate, no comfort in the irrevocably simple fact that you had one at all. Eddie got his aspirator and triggered it once into his mouth, shuddering violently.

"Well, depending on the song, he'd be doing you a favor. Imagine having "The Safety Dance" imprinted on your skin forever?" Stan deadpanned, and all of a sudden they all burst into laughter. An impromptu performance of the song commenced, Richie and Bev going as far as doing the weird dance moves from the song's videoclip.

After shooting the shit for a bit more, they slowly started dispersing for home. Bev insisted on walking with Ben to make sure he got home with no new encounters with the Bowers gang, and Bill went over to Stan's for a game of Monopoly - ever since his younger brother George had gone missing, Bill found every possible excuse to stay away from his own house. That left Richie and Eddie to make their way home together, seeing as they lived near each other and were going the same direction.

Though Eddie had his bike, Richie had ridden double on Silver with Bill on the way to the Barrens. So now they both walked, talking about everything and nothing while slowly making their way down Center Street, Eddie holding his bike beside him by the handlebars. As they turned the corner into Main Street, still two blocks away from Eddie's house and five from Richie's, they decided to stop for some ice cream. Eddie got a plain strawberry cone, while Richie went for vanilla with sprinkles. They slurped their cones while sitting on a bench situated halfway down the street, content in enjoying each other's company and doing some people-watching.

One of their favorite past-times whenever they were out on the street (which wasn't that often; they preferred to spend their time at the Barrens, where no one could bother them) involved picking a random passerby and imagining a whole backstory for their life: where they came from, what they worked with, if they had a spouse and kids, what their soulmate song was. Whenever Richie was playing the game, he also included one of his Voices, so the person ended up being from Kentucky, or Russia.

That was what they were doing now, but Eddie only had half of his attention on the game. On the back of his mind, many thoughts circled, all around the same subject. He thought of Ben and Bev's strange behavior towards each other; of how Richie's wristband seemed always to be on his field of vision; of that terrible encounter with a leper he'd had not long ago...

His ice cream melted in rivulets down his arm while he lost himself in his head. After one of Richie's jokes about a woman with an eyepatch and a pet raccoon fell flat, he turned to Eddie and poked him on the ribs.

"Penny for your thoughts, Spaghetti Man."

Eddie startled out of his daze, finally realizing the sticky pink mess he had made. He hurried to throw his mostly-empty cone in a nearby trashcan, then pulled out a wet wipe from his fanny pack to clean his arm with. When he sat back down on the bench, Richie was squinting at him with a somewhat concerned expression.

"You okay? You're usually not so casual about getting dirty," Richie said. 

"I'm fine, I just..." Eddie went through his earlier reflections and picked the safest topic to breach. "What was that all about with Ben and Bev earlier?"

Richie let out a laugh, pointing his own empty ice cream cone at Eddie triumphantly. "Aha! So I wasn't the only one who picked up weird vibes from them!" He tossed his cone at the trash, and missed. 

"Yeah, you definitely weren't, they were acting weird. But why?" Eddie mused.

"I don't know, maybe they're sooooulmates," Richie said, the last word singsonged. He leaned his head on Eddie's shoulder and batted his eyelashes up at him, hands clasped together in front of his chest in a supplicating gesture.  

Eddie threw Richie off of him, not sparing a moment to think about why the boy's touch made him nervous.

"Yuck, as if!" he protested, even though that was what he himself had been thinking just a moment ago. The idea of two of his friends being soulmates sounded as repulsive to him as it was intriguing.

"Why not? Most people who end up being soulmates were friends first," Richie shrugged.

Eddie frowned at him. "How do you know that?"

"Everyone knows that, Eds," Richie chuckled, a deep blush blossoming on his cheeks. "Anyway, there's no reason why they can't know they're each other's soulmates, seeing as they've both already got their Words and all."

This topic of conversation, much as it made Eddie squirm with a discomfort which had little to do with the hard wooden seat of the bench he was sitting on, was also one he had been hoping to get at with Richie since that day in the school cafeteria when his friend first announced the appearance of his mark. The full body twitch he felt then returned now, that encompassing curiosity for what lay within reach but out of sight, underneath Richie's cotton wristband. Eddie felt his breath quicken, but held off on using his aspirator in favor of asking the question that had been on the tip of his tongue for what felt like forever:

"Do you think you know who yours is? Soulmate, I mean."

Richie was quiet for so long that Eddie was sure he wasn't going to answer him. This shocked him - it was extremely rare for Richie to pass up an opportunity to talk, especially when prompted. In fact, the only reason why Eddie knew he had heard him at all was because Richie's cheeks still burned a bright scarlet. 

"I... I'm not sure," Richie replied at last. "Maybe. I don't know."

Eddie did go for his inhaler then, triggering it once and allowing the medicine to let him breathe easier. It didn't work as well as it normally did, for he knew it could do little to calm his rapidly beating heart.

"Wow. Um... Wow." It took Eddie some time to find a thought in his head that wasn't either " _God, what if it's me?_ " or " _What if it's not?_ " on a loop. "Who... Who is it?"

"I said I don't know, all right!" Richie jumped off the bench and threw his arms up, exasperated. " _Jay_ -sus Christ, what's with the interrogation? Ye can't let a poor man live 'is life, naw can ye?" His Irish Cop Voice came through then, a barrier between him and Eddie that Eddie wasn't sure if he was glad of having or not.

"Okay, okay, sorry I asked!" Eddie raised his hands too, his gesture one of surrender. He stood up, grabbed his bike and started walking with it beside him, not looking back to see if Richie was following. "C'mon, let's get going. It's getting dark and my mom will kill me if I come home after curfew."

Later that night, Eddie lied awake in bed staring at the ceiling, his room lit only by what little moonlight entered through his window. His thoughts scared him, and he was afraid of going to sleep and dreaming about a sick leper and the horrific thing he had showed him...

When he did fall asleep, he ended up dreaming about Richie. In it, dream-Richie cackled mockingly at Eddie and threw an arm (an arm which was free of any sort of concealment, undistinguished Words imprinted on his bare wrist) around the shoulders of Beverly Marsh. "You didn't think it was actually you, did you, Eddie Spaghetti?" dream-Richie laughed and laughed. Eddie didn't dream about the leper, but when he woke up in a startle a few hours later, cold sweat soaking his pajama shirt, it felt just as if he had.

 

* * *

  

There was a clown. There was a clown, and It was taking kids, like Betty Ripsom, and Eddie Corcoran, and Georgie Denbrough. Or so Mike Hanlon, the latest (and last) addition to their Losers' Club, explained it when all seven of them gathered at the quarry one day in late July.

The whole discussion started because of Bill.

They had been enjoying a rather peaceful day at the Barrens before then; Stan had brought his dad's sizable boombox, Eddie his cassette tapes, and together they spent the afternoon listening to music and getting in some good chucks, as Richie put it. Ben and Mike traded stories of the books they had already read since school let out for the summer, Stan and Bill discussed the latest issue of Fantastic Four, and Richie and Bev alternated between the two groups, throwing an odd comment here and there whenever their mouths were not occupied with the cigarette they were sharing.

Eddie laid back, a beach towel underneath him so he wouldn't be in direct contact with the ground and get his clothes dirty, and focused on his music. He tried relaxing into the moment, closing his eyes and allowing himself to be pulled in by the melodies he knew by heart, one after the other.

But sometimes Richie would break into song alongside the recording, his singing voice not actually that bad, and Eddie would be violently pulled from his semi-meditative state by a sudden pounding in his chest. It was hard to simply revel in the songs he loved when every lyric that was enthusiastically replicated made Eddie paranoid that it was the one someone else loved as well, loved so much they unknowingly branded them onto his friend's skin.

Richie was in the middle of a heartfelt rendition of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" when Eddie stood up in a leap of nervous energy and shut the boombox off.

"Let's go for a swim," he demanded, already reaching down to undo the laces on his sneakers.

They undressed down to their underclothes, ready to jump in the water, and that's when they first saw Bill's left thigh half-covered in Word Tape. They were all thrown for a loop, but after a brief moment of stunned silence, a chorus of congratulations (as well as one unnecessarily hard slap in the back from Richie) echoed throughout the group. Eddie couldn't bring himself to join in, too hurt that his best friend hadn't even bothered to tell him he had gotten his Words.

When he confronted Bill about it, the boy just shrugged.

"S-s-sorry Eds, I guh-guess it s-slipped my m-mind." 

Bill had been acting strange for quite a while. He didn't crack as many jokes, and sometimes he got really quiet, his eyes wandering far away. It wasn't that he was bored by whatever they were doing at the time; Bill was usually the first one to come up with a new idea to entertain himself when their current activity grew tedious to him. It was how he and Eddie had ended up building that shabby dam in the beginning of summer, and how he invented the Build a Life game (the one in which they came up with a stranger's life story). No, whenever Bill got into that silent, distracted mood, he had always looked terrified.

Eddie thought he was still grieving the disappearance of his brother so he let it slide, but now it had got too far. This was your _Words_ , for Pete's sake! It wasn't just something that _slipped your mind_ to tell your best friends. 

So he pressured Bill to finally confess what had been preoccupying him so much, and after making them promise they wouldn't laugh, or call him a liar, Bill told them. Stuttering harder than ever but not stopping, he told them about Georgie, and the moving photo in the album, and the clown.

It was the last thing he wanted to do, but Bill's show of bravery prompted Eddie to share his own strange encounter with the hobo on Neibolt Street. He told them of how the man had approached him with lewd requests, and how later, when Eddie was running away from him and turned around to see if he was safe, he had been wearing a silver clown suit with dirty orange buttons.

He decided to skip the part of the story where the repulsive man had showed him his putrid flesh marked with Eddie's favorite song, though.

It felt wrong for him to say it. Not because it was embarrassing, or because he was still hurt that Bill hadn't told them his own Word-related story (though both points may have been a bit true). It was just that Eddie knew, in his heart of hearts, that if he uttered those words out loud, spoke them into existence, they would become real. That he would have a soulmate in a dead man walking, and he wasn't sure which part of that thought scared him the most, the _dead_ or the _man_.

Confession hour for the Losers' Club continued as Ben stepped up to tell his own gruesome story of the mummy he saw by the Canal; following that was Bev and the tale of the gushing blood in her bathroom sink. They all turned to Stan next, waiting to see if he too had had the misfortune of coming in contact with something of the kind.

Stan, who had been looking more and more distressed as the talk went on, now shook his head vigorously.

"It's not _real_ ," he pleaded in a cry of anguish. His eyes swam with unshed tears. "How can you believe any of this is real? A clown who changes shape and goes after kids?" 

Richie shrugged one shoulder in an attitude of indifference that didn't agree with the paleness of his face. He was more serious than any of the others had ever seen him.

"We all have magic Words that show up on our skin and lead us to our soulmates, man. How is that any more real than this?" he said, for once not hiding behind funny accents. He lit a new cigarette, his shaking hands making it so that the flame took a few tries to hit the cigarette-end.

Stan looked baffled for a moment, either by the argument itself or by the fact Richie was the one who had said it. "You haven't even _seen_ anything, Rich, you can't understand..." After Ben's speech and before Bev's, they had turned to Richie to ask him and he denied ever meeting a clown, or any other monster that wasn't on a screen at the Aladdin. 

Richie pushed his glasses up with the heel of the hand which was holding the half-smoked cigarette. "I haven't, but I believe these guys, okay?" His gaze locked with Eddie's for a second, then moved away just as fast to focus on the ground. It reminded Eddie, strangely, of the way Ben had acted around Beverly the day he was attacked by Henry Bowers. 

"Fellas, if you let me..." Mike started.

What he proceeded to tell the other Losers involved research he had made on the town following the many disappearances, and how it led him to other events of the same nature, all happening in Derry in intervals of about thirty years. He also told them of the town's sewage system, and how it was probably the lair of whatever thing It was that caused so many scares and worse things to pass within their group, and beyond.

"We h-have to kuh-kuh-kill It," Bill announced, a fire burning in his eyes. 

And that's how the seven of them arranged a visit to the sewers.

 

* * *

 

They came together at the Barrens the very next day; they all knew there was no point delaying the inevitable, and who knew how many more kids could be hurt if they took too long to take action.

That didn't mean they weren't scared to death of actually going through with it, though.

Eddie grasped his aspirator tight within his hand as he watched his friends stand quietly in a circle, none willing to say something and set the wheels in motion. Then Bill moved forward and handed Beverly the only weapon they would take on their mission: a slingshot and two silver slugs. She took them and put them in the back pocket of her jeans, looking distressed yet resigned - she had earlier in the day proved herself to be the best shot of the group, after all.

"Wait," someone said, and only after seeing all eyes turned on him, Eddie realized it was himself. 

"Wuh-What is it, Eh-Eh-Eddie?" Bill was calm, his tone patient. He was trying to act as a source of strength for the group, which Eddie appreciated immensely, though he couldn't quite mask the fear in his eyes.

"Does this feel right to you? I don't think it feels right," Eddie said. He didn't need to explain himself any better. He saw it in all their faces that they too felt that something was missing, a step they needed to take before the final showdown. "We need..." He searched in his head for a way to continue, but came up short.

Beverly was toying with the hem of her shirt with one hand. "What if-"

"I think we should share our soulmarks with each other." 

It was Eddie who said it, his mouth once more running ahead of his conscious thoughts. His cheeks blossomed deep-red, but his voice was steady. As soon as he said it, a weight lifted from his shoulders, and he knew it was what they had to do. 

On any other occasion his statement would have come across as rude, impolite, bordering on pornographic. Now, standing together moments before what they inwardly acknowledged as a possible suicide mission, no such opposition was made. Not for the first time during the course of that summer, they felt as though something was guiding them in their journey, and this next piece locked seamlessly in the puzzle that was their venture.

They would have started disrobing with not much concern, if not for Bill's following remark: 

"Wait a s-s-second... You st-still haven't got your Wuh-Words, h-have you, Eh-Eddie?"

Eddie hadn't. He gave himself a full-body check in his bedroom mirror every day before getting dressed so as to look for them, but so far no mark had appeared. He searched thoroughly from his ears to the soles of his feet, his armpits to the back of his knees. He even considered shaving his head too see if something had been engraved into his skull. He hadn't gone forth with that idea yet; at thirteen, he knew he was still within the window of time expected of boys to receive their mark. 

"Well... Not exactly," he answered Bill, voice going high at the end as he wheezed. He triggered his aspirator into his mouth once, and felt the healing effect immediately.

"You ees goin loco, senhorr. How do you expect to show sometheeng you don have?" Richie asked.

"Well..." Eddie said again, trying to come up with an excuse to justify his idea. Luckily for him, Bev did it first: 

"You can be like our medium! Bring all our marks together... But how?" she thought out loud, one finger tapping at her lips.

This time, it wasn't Eddie who ran his mouth.

"You could kiss them," Richie blurted.

His eyes, which always looked big due to his Coke-bottle glasses, now bulged to comical proportions. Eddie believed he was having the same impression that he himself had just moments before - like his mouth had run off without his permission. The feeling might be much more familiar to Richie than it was to Eddie, though, seeing as the boy couldn't seem to use his brain-to-mouth filter on a daily basis. 

Hearing Richie's idea, Eddie felt his throat close up, and he gasped for breath. He pumped his inhaler twice and felt his airways open again, though the feeling of breathlessness remained. The thought of not only seeing all his friends' (of seeing _Richie's_ ) marks, but actually kissing them... No medicine in the world could make him breathe easy in the face of that. 

"Aw Richie, aren't you a softie?" Bev teased, wrapping an arm around Richie's shoulders and pressing their heads together. Richie shrugged her off but then immediately fell down on his knees, throwing himself at her feet.

"It's you who makes me this way, baby!" He grabbed both of her legs and looked up at her pleadingly. "Let's run away, just you and me. We don't need no other stinking Words when we've got our own." 

Bev giggled and shook her head, reaching down to ruffle Richie's hair.

While they goofed around, Eddie occupied himself by mulling over Richie's suggestion. More specifically, he reminisced on the only other time he had seen someone's soulmark. The memory was vague, but he remembered being in his mother's room, sitting behind her as he laboriously read the Words inscribed on her back. He remembered wanting to show his love for her in some way, and how his solution had been to press a soft kiss to her mark. 

As a kid, no impure thought had crossed his mind at the gesture; it was nothing more than a pure expression of love. Being as they were now, on the verge of facing a monster that preyed on kids and fed on fear, it seemed appropriate to Eddie that they should recharge themselves with feelings of innocence and love.

"Okay," he said, and once more he felt his breath hitch, but this time he pushed it down. _Not now_ , he thought. _Not when my friends need me_. "Let's do this."

Richie scrambled back to his feet, the surprise of actually being listened to shocking him speechless for once. They all instinctively turned to Bill, waiting for him to have the final say in the matter. As Bill solemnly nodded and started unbuttoning his jean shorts without further comment, everyone else followed suit. Eddie, who had nothing to unveil, stood still and kept his eyes down, trying to will his heart to stop racing as all around him his best friends started exposing the most secret parts of themselves.

Only Bill, Stan, and Ben had to actually undress in some way or other: Bill pulled down his shorts, leaving him in his white underpants, and Stan and Ben both took off their shirts. As this wasn't an ordinary day at the Barrens, with the possibility of going for a swim later on, neither Ben nor Bill had bothered with Word Tape, so their marks appeared as soon as they disrobed. Stan, however, always careful, had the extra precaution of the adhesive; he placed his neatly-folded shirt on the ground and reached for the tape stuck to his breastbone, peeling it back slowly until his mark too was uncovered. 

Directly in front of Eddie in the circle, Mike reached down and rolled the left leg of his pants up to the knee, and suddenly his Words too were visible, though not as obvious as the others' for their color was close to his dark skin. Beside him, Bev simply reached for the tape on her left forearm snapped it away quickly, like she was removing a band-aid. She crumbled the strip and threw it carelessly on the ground. 

Which left only Richie to go. From the corner of his eyes, Eddie watched as Richie bit his lip and shuffled his weight from one foot to the other for a moment. Then, as quickly as Bev had taken hers off, Richie pulled on his wristband, shoving it down the front pocket of his shorts as soon as it was removed.

As soon as he did, Eddie squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head to the left so fast it almost gave him whiplash. He found that, now that it was finally, impossibly, within his reach to see Richie's mark, he was too scared to do it. 

When he opened his eyes again, he saw Bill staring back at him, one corner of his mouth turned up in a small, comforting smile, probably thinking Eddie was just overwhelmed at the whole thing, and not at the prospect of seeing one particular mark. Eddie smiled back and shifted to face the center of the circle, his muscles finally beginning to relax as he took stock of his friends. Their heads moved this and that way, regarding each other eagerly, soaking up the forbidden knowledge they decided to share with one another.

"Yowza, boss, looks like we got a heartbreaker over here!" Richie smirked. Across from him, Stan blushed furiously, his hand going to his collarbone to rub at his Words. Even partially hidden, Eddie could still make them out from underneath Stan's hand:

_I'm a bad boy for breaking her heart_

"That's not me," Stan affirmed, his firm tone denouncing he had thought long and hard about the subject. "I'm never gonna break my girl's heart, just you see."

Eddie was oddly touched by the vehemence of Stan's proclamation, though he secretly suspected that was too unrealistic of a promise to keep. If there was something you couldn't prevent, it was the way you felt, as Eddie had come to learn. Sometimes heartbreak was as inevitable as loving in the first place.

"I duh-don't recog-gnize that s-s-song, Stuh-Stan... Have you ch-checked the A-Archives?" Bill asked, and Eddie had to agree that the lyric didn't ring a bell for him either.

Derry's Public Library (as well as every other library in the country, Eddie supposed) had a whole section dedicated to Words. It contained dozens of encyclopedic volumes filled with song lyrics, so that a person could look for their Words when they appeared and find the song they belonged to. Their indexes included key words for easy access, ranging from basic ones like "love" and "heart" - this last possibly being what Stan used on his search - to more obscure ones like "tiger", or "socks". 

"Of course I have, Bill," Stan scoffed. His hand went from his collarbone to fidget at the hem of his chino shorts, leaving his Words bare once more. "I... Didn't find anything."

"Yeah, m-me neither," Bill shrugged.

It wasn't unheard of to not be able to identify one's Words - usually that just meant you were going to find your soulmate later in life. There was of course also the possibility that a small library such as Derry's simply wasn't updated enough to hold their songs; Eddie guessed that it hadn't gotten any new encyclopedia volumes in the past few years, if not longer. 

Glancing briefly at his friends' Words, still marveling at the fact that he _could_ , Eddie found he actually didn't recognize most of them. He didn't allow his eyes to go past Mike on the circle, though; looking at Richie was still more than he could bear. He didn't even risk shooting a look at Bev's mark, for as it was placed on her left forearm, and Richie's being on his right wrist, they came too close to one another as the two stood side by side.

The only mark Eddie could recognize so far was Ben's, vaguely relating it to a Journey song. He noticed Ben had been staring at Bev for quite a while, a smile so radiant on his face Eddie didn't even have to look at Bev to know Ben had found his song in her. _Richie was right about them_ , he mused, and briefly wondered if Richie had also been correct about his guess for his own soulmate.

"Are you gonna do this or what, Eddie? We ain't getting any younger," Mike teased, and they all broke into laughter, any last remains of awkwardness vanishing from the group. 

"All right, all right, don't get your panties in a twist," Eddie answered, waving a hand at Mike as though to appease him. He was now faced with a choice: either go left and start with Bill, or turn right and face Richie.

He turned left, and if he heard a tiny, unrestrained gasp coming from the other direction, he pretended he hadn't.

Bill was quiet as Eddie came to stand in front of him, for which Eddie was glad. The only words Eddie wanted to focus on now were the ones on his fellow Losers' skins. He felt a bit silly as he ungracefully went down on his knees to be on the same level as Bill's Words, which were inscribed on his left thigh. Eddie pushed away all thoughts of lepers and crude propositions, and read the Words in front of him, written in the same slightly crooked yet strong calligraphy as all others: 

 _The lengths that I would go to  
__The distance in your eyes_  

They were no more familiar to him than they had been when he first glimpsed them, just moments before. But even though he couldn't sing along to Bill's Words, he nonetheless felt their power. They conveyed such longing, such bittersweet devotion, that Eddie felt his heart clench, as much as it had for his mother all those years past. It was then the easiest thing for him to lean forward, as he did in his Ma's room at six years old, and press his lips to Bill's mark. In the brief gesture, he tried to convey all the love and admiration he felt for his best friend, share with him any scrap of strength he possessed so they could go on and fight It and win.

Then he heard a gasp from above, and the moment was gone. He sprang back to his feet and ignored the flush on Bill's face, Bill doing him the same courtesy. The group remained blissfully quiet as Eddie moved on.

Ben was next, and though his mark was also low on his body like Bill's, Eddie didn't feel comfortable kneeling again. He squatted awkwardly and regarded Ben's huge belly and the Words imprinted side-by-side an already scarred H:

 _One love feeds the fire  
_ _One heart burns desire_

Considering how Ben and Bev had turned out to be soulmates, Eddie thought it was rather sweet how Ben's Words mentioned fire, a clear connection to Bev's bright hair. Only as he made the comparison in his head did the situation finally feel real to Eddie: he was seeing, and was about to touch, a mark that had already found its match. He glanced up at Ben, eyes wide, but Ben just smiled at him, nodding his head to confirm it was all right, he could do it. So Eddie, for the second time that day, kissed a soulmark.

He followed without pause to Stan, and then Mike (Stan held himself like a statue during his turn, and Mike let out a giggle on his). Then at last it was time for Bev, and Eddie trembled as he turned away from Mike and towards her, dreading the moment in which, going for her arm, he would involuntarily look at Richie's.

When he did turn, however, that was not what happened. Bev was waiting patiently for him, yes, but Richie's mark wasn't right beside hers as it should have been. Richie had folded both of his arms, hands tucked under his armpits, wrists hidden from view. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were narrowed, the very picture of a boy sulking, as if his mother had took away his toy.

Eddie furrowed his brows, wanting more than anything to ask what had put him in such a state, but he refrained himself. It was not yet time to deal with Richie, not to mention he was loathe to say anything; with the exception of the occasional sigh or snicker, no one had let out a single sound since Eddie had began his kissing tour.

A surprised laugh carried out in the otherwise silent Barrens, and it came from Eddie himself, as he finally got the chance to read the Words imprinted on Bev's arm. Eddie recognized the lyrics immediately, and turned his head back towards Ben to tease him about them. At any other time Eddie believed Ben might have been embarrassed, but today he just shrugged one shoulder and beamed right back at him. Eddie supposed nothing could spoil Ben's good mood just yet, not even being outed as a New Kids on the Block fan because, sure as anything, Bev's mark read: 

 _I'll be loving you forever  
_ _Just as long as you want me to be_

The song was corny but the message was sweet, and Eddie reckoned Bev had hit the Word jackpot: it didn't get much more romantic than an eternal proclamation of love. Propelled by the silliness of the song, Eddie grasped Bev's arm with both hands and pressed a loud kiss to her mark, the sound made by the smack of his lips making everyone laugh once again. Everyone but Richie, who still seemed intent on wallowing in his grumpiness.

Eddie sighed, bracing himself both for dealing with his sullen friend and for at long last seeing the mark he most intimately wanted to. He took a fortifying breath, inhaler lying forgotten in his back pocket, and spun on his heels towards Richie. 

By the time he got to stand in front of him, Eddie's lips were tingling from all the kisses and his heart was thumping wildly in his chest. He ignored it all and tentatively reached out a hand, breaking at last the prolonged silence:

"May I?" he whispered.

Richie stared at him for a long moment, his eyes appearing to search for something in Eddie's face. Eddie stared back openly, hoping Richie found whatever it was he was looking for. Maybe he did, because he slowly let his arms down, putting his right hand, palm up, on top of Eddie's.

The letters inscribed on his wrist were small, as they needed to be in order to fit in the space of a skinny kid's wrist, and spanned two lines, as did most of the others' (Mike's and Stan's being the only single-lined ones). Eddie leaned forward a bit and squinted to read better, cocking his head to one side for the Words were directed opposite from him, towards the inside of Richie's arm. When he finally managed to read what was written, he startled so violently he almost dropped Richie's hand - the only reason he didn't was because Richie turned his hand within his own and clutched it tight. 

The Words on Richie's skin said:

 _It’s gonna take a lot  
_ _To drag me away from you_

The words to Eddie's favorite song.

At first, Eddie was sure he had read them wrong. It was a trick of his eyes, the sunlight creating some sort of mirage, as if Eddie was a parched man in the desert and Richie's Words were a glass of water. Then his thoughts turned darker: he convinced himself that this wasn't Richie at all, but It playing another cruel joke on him. At any moment now, Richie's faded Freese's shirt would turn into a silver clown suit, and the arm Eddie was still holding would rot and decay, though the teasing Words would still be legible among the scabs and wounds.

Eddie looked up, frightened, and all he saw was Richie. He was still the same boy he knew: unkept hair, Coke-bottle glasses, slightly buck teeth. Richie's eyes studied him hungrily, as if determined to catalogue every detail of Eddie's reaction. Eddie tried with all his might to school his expression into the most neutral he could manage, but so many thoughts raced through his head that he felt like they would leak out of his ears, or worse, come spilling out of his mouth.

So he decided to keep his mouth occupied and, with trembling lips, pressed a kiss to Richie's mark. 

It was different than it had been with any of the other Losers, to say the least. To give a more accurate description, it was like kissing the others had been Little League games, and kissing Richie was the World Series' final home run. Maybe it was the fact they were holding hands, Eddie having pulled on Richie's hand to draw his mark towards him; or maybe it was that, for whatever reason, they had kept eye contact the whole time. 

An intense shiver passed through Eddie, almost like a charge of electricity, and he dropped Richie's hand at last. He took a step back but chanced a quick glance at Richie's face before backing away, and almost let out a giggle at the scene in front of him. Richie's mouth stood slightly open, his eyes slowly blinking; he looked down on his own Words as the fingers of his other hand hovered above them, as if scared to touch.

Eddie hurried back to his original place in the circle, aware that his cheeks were flaming red just as much as Richie's. They all remained silent for another long moment, their eyes sparkling as they surveyed one another. Eddie wanted to stay in that moment forever, basking in his friends' love and feeling his whole body tremble with energy. He turned his head to the right, fearless, and peered at the incredible Words on Richie's wrist.

Then the moment was broken as Bill spoke out:

"Jesus Rih-Richie, y-you look like suh-someone just l-laughed at wuh-one of your j-j-jokes."

"Oh shut it Big Bill, your Words look like a lady's garter."

There was one more second of complete silence, then they all exploded into laughter. Bev keeled over, grasping at her stomach as she guffawed, and Eddie wiped a few tears of mirth from the corner of his eyes.

Their laughter slowly subdued until they fell silent again, but this time the quiet wasn't comforting as it was before. Eddie didn't need to ask them to know they were all thinking the same thing: it was time to go and face It. Their bonding was complete, the connection within the group now stronger than ever, especially with the knowledge that they had two ( _or maybe four?_ Eddie's treacherous brain supplied) soulmates in their midst. There was nothing more to be done, and as Bev took the slingshot out of her pocket and held it firmly in her hand, Mike said:

"Shall we go?"

Bill nodded, and they were off.

 

* * *

  

The next weeks after they defeated It passed by in a blur.

The Losers' Club still met almost every day that summer, sometimes catching a movie at the Aladdin, or playing board games at the dining table in Bill's kitchen, but mostly just hanging out at the Barrens. They never spoke about what had gone down in the sewers, nor about what they did before getting there. Whenever they went for a swim, their Words remained hidden behind tapes and bands. It made no difference if they showed them or not, though; the knowledge of them still burned bright in their minds, linking them all together for as long as they remembered.

Ben and Beverly started treating each other differently after that day, of course. Now, Ben bought  Beverly a bucket of popcorn whenever they went to the movies, and she shared it with him as they sat side by side in the darkened room, their hands sometimes staying inside the bowl for a long time before they moved. Every time they parted ways, Bev gave him a kiss on the cheek, and every time Ben still blushed, though Eddie noticed he was getting better at not stuttering in his goodbye. Eddie didn't know if they were dating, and supposed it didn't really matter. They were soulmates, and nothing would ever keep them apart.

They were all leaving the quarry one day, after hours of doing nothing but soak in the sun, and as Ben and Bev went through their ritual of kiss-blush-stutter, Eddie turned around to look at Richie.

Richie was currently climbing on the back of Silver, ready to ride double on Bill's bike until Bill dropped him at the three-way intersection of Main, Center and Kansas Streets, like he always did. Eddie sighed deeply, wishing he had a bike big enough - and more strength in his legs - to offer Richie a ride, not only because they lived closer together than him and Bill, but simply because he would like to spend more time with the other boy. Since he had neither of those things, he just grabbed his bike and mounted it, waving a lazy hand in reply to the calls of "See you tomorrow!" he got from Stan and Mike as he started pedaling away.

He leisurely made his way home, his bike zig-zagging through deserted streets as he mulled over the same thoughts that had being going through his mind for weeks.

 _Is it me?_ was the one to which he returned most often. _Am I the one who put those Words on Richie's skin?_  

The answer changed every time he asked himself that question. _Of course it is,_  he would think one day, mere hours after Richie pinched his cheek and called him the cutest boy in all of Derry. _Not in a million years_ would be his answer the very next day, when Richie showed them all how he had learn to burp the alphabet. 

Many times he thought came close to confronting Richie about it. But how exactly would conversation that go? _So, Richie, that's my favorite song you've got there on your wrist. Crazy, huh? Oh, you want me to prove to you we're soulmates? Sorry, I can't, 'cause I HAVEN'T GOT MY FUCKING WORDS YET!_

He slowed his pedaling to a stop, reaching into his pocket to grab his inhaler. He took a deep breath as he triggered it, put it back in his pocket, and started moving again.

As much as he wanted to talk to Richie, there was no point in doing it if he didn't have a mark of his own to match his and confirm without a doubt that they were soulmates. Yet in spite of that uncertainty, there was one thing that Eddie couldn't stop from going back to: Richie had said he knew. That day in the bench, when they were eating ice-cream and Eddie had still been itching with the need to know, Richie had told him he knew who his soulmate was. He had tried to talk his way around it, sure, but Eddie could see he knew. Or at least had a pretty good hunch.

What did that mean? Did he know back then it was Eddie? Could he have been thinking of someone else? If so, who? It wasn't like they had many (if any) other friends outside the Losers, and it couldn't be any of the others... Right?

That endless cycle of thoughts went around and around Eddie's head, and he had no way of getting out of it until he learned anything new. Which happened in early November, mere days before his fourteenth birthday.

Eddie was getting ready for school, and had just pulled off his sleep t-shirt (a tattered old shirt, faded green with the inscription DERRY CAMP, SUMMER 1986 and the image of a moose) when he first saw it.

He had stopped doing his daily body inspection, tired of the constant disappointment of not finding anything, but he still dressed in front of his full-length mirror, the only reason why he didn't completely miss it. At first he thought it was just a weird ink smudge, his eyes half-closed and his mind still groggy from sleep. He blindly put on a yellow polo shirt - a patterned sweater waiting by his bed, for it had begun to get rather chilly - and reached down to take off his pajama pants. Then his brain caught up to his eyes and he scrambled to tug his shirt off again, turning sideways so he could see himself better. There they still were, engraved onto his left side, sitting on his ribs as if they've always been there.

His Words.

Eddie felt a scream coming, and smacked a hand over his mouth just in time to keep it in. The last thing he wanted was for his mom to come in his room (without knocking, as always) and ask him what was wrong. So he settled for quietly jumping up and down a few times, a huge grin hidden behind the hand which still covered his mouth.

In his excitement he had forgotten to actually _read_ the Words, so he leaned forward and looked at them in the mirror. They were obviously backwards, and though Eddie could still read them if he focused, he wanted to have the pleasure of reading his mark for the first time the right way. He sprinted for his dresser and yanked the first drawer open, pulling out a small square mirror from it. He then rushed back to the full-length mirror and positioned both in a way that he could at last make out what his Words said. His heart was beating so fast he could hardly breathe, but his aspirator was the furthest thing from his mind. He looked down on a mirror that shook lightly due to being held by trembling hands, and read: 

 _However far away  
__I will always love you_  

His breath hitched. He recognized that song! He wouldn't have to go to the library and spend endless hours reading song lyrics in the faint hope of finding his - he _knew_ it. How could he not? He'd heard Richie sing it a dozen times.

He looked up and beamed a dazzling smile at his reflection. _That's it_ , he thought. _That's all the proof I needed. It's him._ He thought back to a day, not even a month ago, when Richie had strutted into school, proudly displaying his brand-new The Cure t-shirt - black with the band's name written in purple and a photo of Robert Smith in his trademark look of electrified hair and heavy make-up - and let out a barking laugh. He quickly covered his mouth again and glanced guiltily back at his bedroom door, but his mother didn't come barging in. He sighed, walking backwards until his knees found the bed. He sat down heavily, laughing again, more quietly this time, and raised his left hand to touch his mark, caressing it gently with his fingertips. A shiver went through him as he lied back on the bed, smiling stupidly at the ceiling.

He gazed down on the Words again. They were upside down now, but he didn't care: he had memorized them already. As he finally thought about the meaning of the two sentences, though, his smile faded. _However far away_ ... He thought back on his own favorite song and, if he was right, the lyrics he had unwittingly turned into Richie's Words: _Drag me away from you_.

Why was it that both their Words talked about separation? That couldn't actually mean it would happen to them... Soulmates weren't supposed to be apart, not after they'd found each other.  Why would they be? They were literally supposed to be halves of the same whole, more compatible for each other than anyone else. Suddenly, Eddie felt his eyes fill with tears. His soulmate song was so bittersweet! He had heard it before, not only coming from Richie's mouth but an actual recording of it; the lyrics were beautiful, but the melody always tugged at his heartstrings whenever he listened to it.

Strangely, his first thought was that he wanted to tell Bill about it. Bill would know what to do, he always did. Besides, Eddie remembered, Bill's Words were also somewhat sad. He'd had more time to think about what it meant to have such heartbreaking Words, and would be able to guide Eddie through the same process. True, Bill hadn't come to Eddie when he first got his own mark all those months ago, but he was still Eddie's best friend and he needed his opinion and support.

But then again, would it be weird to show his mark to someone, even if that someone was your best friend and had already showed you his own? Eddie supposed he could just go and talk directly to Richie instead. If anyone deserved to know, it was him. They would finally have the conversation they had been postponing for so long, and everything would make sense. Yes, that would be the most sensible decision. 

So why did it scare Eddie half to death to do it? He thought back on the time he shared with the Losers his encounter with the leper, and his omission of the fact that he (It, actually) had shown false Words to Eddie. Back then, he hadn't wanted to speak his fear aloud and therefore make it true; Eddie supposed it was the same principle that held him back now. If he went to Richie, there would be no more hiding. He would have to deal head on with the truth that he was Richie's soulmate, and Richie was his. _Or_ , he thought, his face scrunching up unhappily, _the truth that we're not._  

Eddie didn't know what he would do if he and Richie ended up not being soulmates after all. He had entertained the notion for so long now that he feared breaking that fantasy might result in breaking his heart along with it. He would rather continue to dream than live in a reality in which it didn't happen. 

He decided he would take no spur of the moment attitude: today he would go to school, interact with his friends as if nothing had changed - as if his world hadn't turned on its axis - and try not to let the illusion fall apart. Eddie stood up from his bed, wiped the few stray tears that had fallen before he could stop them, and finished getting dressed. Yes, he would postpone the conversation, at least until he chose exactly what to do next. The deferral gave him the slightest measure of comfort so, giving his Words one last gentle brush, he set out for school.

A few days later, the decision was made for him.

 

* * *

 

It was the day of Eddie's birthday, and he sat on the dining room table having lunch with his mom. She had made him his favorite, or at least what she thought was his favorite: meatloaf. Eddie barely tolerated it; the food was dry, tasteless and slightly cold in the middle. He powered through each forkful, nonetheless, giving his mother the occasional close-mouthed smile whenever she asked if he thought it was good.

Eddie hadn't told her of his getting his Words yet. In fact, he hadn't told anyone. He was glad his mark was in a place that was always concealed by clothes, especially now that it was cold - he didn't want to risk buying Word Tape at Mr. Keene's, for fear he might rattle him out to his mom.

As Eddie laboriously went through the meatloaf on his plate, his mother spoke up: 

"Eddie-bear, you know how we always spend Thanksgiving with your aunts over in New York?"

Eddie nodded, taking a big gulp of water to help down his mouthful.

"Well, honey," Sonia continued, looking down at her hands as she fiddled with a napkin, tearing it into little pieces. "I just talked to your aunt Katia this morning, and it seems like she's not in good shape. Not that she's ill!" she hurried to add, as if her sister being sick was the most dreadful of prospects. "No, nothing like that, nothing contagious, of course... But she is rather frail, you see, Eddie. Bedridden, the poor thing." 

"Yes?" Eddie commented, trying to rush his mom's speech along. He had to go get ready, he was meeting the Losers at the Barrens at five o'clock for birthday celebrations.

"Yes," his mom parroted back, the napkin now in shreds at her hands. "So I was talking to her, and I decided, we're going to go live with with her for a while."

Eddie didn't process the information at first. He blinked slowly, brows furrowed and a fork lifted  halfway to his mouth.

"What...?"

"We're leaving this weekend, sweetheart, so we have time to set ourselves up there before Thanksgiving." She gathered the pieces of paper and threw them haphazardly at Eddie's mostly empty plate, collecting it and standing up, conversation done as far as she was concerned. 

"Wait... What do you mean we're leaving? We can't leave!" Eddie's breath quickened, and he got his inhaler from his pocket. He didn't trigger it, the mere physical presence of it inside his tightly-clenched fist enough to subdue him for now.

"Of course we can, honey, and we will." His mother had her back turned from him, but Eddie could see she trembled slightly as she placed Eddie's plate on the kitchen sink.

"You can't do this!" Eddie suddenly shouted, sprouting up from his chair and meeting her in the kitchen. She still wouldn't look him in the eye. "My ..." _My soulmate_ , he wanted to say, "My whole life is here!" 

"Don't be silly, Eddie-bear, your life is with your mother." Sonia's voice was meek, and she would look anywhere in the room but at her son. 

Eddie knew she was scared of him, and he wanted to use that power, but didn't know _how_. He knew he couldn't come out with the truth and tell her about Richie; she would have them in the first bus to New York if she knew her precious son's soulmate was the loudmouth who always seemed to have dirt under his fingernails and reeked of cigarette smoke. 

He was silent for too long, and Sonia took it as a win. Finally, her gaze locked with his and she gave him a condescending smile.

"I worry about you sometimes, Eddie. You're always going out with those rowdy kids, making God knows what sorts of mess... Leaving will be good for us, you need some fresh air." 

 _What I need is to be with my soulmate_ , he wanted to scream. Instead, he gave one last plea, looking up at her, hoping she would understand even if he didn't say anything.

"Ma..."

"I expect you to be packed by tomorrow so we can leave early on Saturday, Eddie," she said,  leaving Eddie alone in the kitchen. She slowly made her way to the living room, undoubtedly to sit at her favorite armchair and waste the rest of the day gazing apathetically at the TV.

Eddie dragged himself upstairs to his bedroom, every step harder to take as he felt his heart grow heavier and heavier. _Talk about a good birthday_ , he thought, and before he knew it, he was giggling. He had never felt less joyous in his life, but he couldn't stop the laugh from slipping out any more than he could stop his mom from making him leave.

He got to his room and closed the door softly behind him. The laughter had stopped somewhere between the stairs and second-floor hallway, and left him feeling nothing. An overwhelming numbness clouded his brain and Eddie embraced it, knowing no good thoughts would come to him if he tried to whoosh it away. 

He stood in front of his full-length mirror and took his shirt off, analyzing his Words carefully. 

Maybe that's what they meant after all, he thought morosely. They would indeed be far away, because Eddie would be taken away. What would he tell Richie now? Should he even tell him anything? What would be crueler, to know you had found your soulmate only to have him separated from you, or to not know it at all? Eddie didn't know, but he supposed he would have to make up his mind about it soon: if he really was going to leave two days from now as his mother had said, today would probably be the last time he ever saw his friends. 

The thought made him drop to the ground, all strength gone from his body as if he was a marionette with cut strings. He hugged his bare chest with his right arm, his hand closing on his ribs, over his damning Words. He felt them press to his palm as his lungs expanded on a heaving breath. Sitting on his knees on the cold floor of his room, Eddie finally allowed himself to cry. His sobs were loud, and he was sure his mom could hear them even over the noise coming from the TV, but she didn't show up at his door, worrying over him and asking him if he was in any pain. He was perhaps in the most pain he had ever been, but no medicine or visit to the Emergency Room would fix him this time. 

He sat there for a while, his short nails pressing down on the skin of his left side until the black of his Words were mixed with the red of his blood. Then, after what could have been twenty minutes but felt like twenty lifetimes, he gave out a huge gasp, sniffed once, and stopped crying. He held onto his bed to help himself rise to his feet, and though his breath was still shaky, his eyes were dry as he changed his clothes.

He got out of the house without saying one word to his mother, and if anything indicated the tenuousness of their relationship at the moment, it was how she didn't call back to make him give her a kiss before he left.

 

* * *

  

Eddie biked the whole way to the Barrens as if on autopilot, concentrating too hard on not thinking about anything. As much as he tried, though, he couldn't stop hearing the already-familiar melancholic melody of his soulmate song, the words "however far away" playing on loop in his head. 

He got to the quarry as the sun was starting to set, and the parked bikes and loud voices denounced that his friends were already waiting for him. He stood there for a moment, hearing their echoing laughter and trying to commit it to memory. Then he schooled his face into a smile he hoped looked genuine, and hurried to join the group.

"Happy birthday, Eddie!" Stan, the first to notice Eddie's presence, exclaimed, and soon after they all offered Eddie their birthday wishes. Bill gave him a solid pat on the back, and Mike approached him with a glazed cake. 

"We baked you a cake," he said. "Or rather, Bev and I baked you a cake, and these other Losers watched," he added with a smirk. 

"Lemon, 'cause that's your favorite," Richie announced proudly.

Eddie felt so much love for them at that moment, he thought he could burst. He lunged forward and embraced Mike in a tight hug. The cake wobbled precariously on Mike's hands, but didn't fall.

"Hey, be careful, I worked hard on that!" Mike laughed, and rearranged his hold on the cake so he could hug Eddie back with one arm.

Eddie sniffed and nodded once, moving away from the embrace. "Sorry, Mike. I just..." He glanced at all of them, looking into their eyes and seeing the love he felt reflected back at him.

"Thank you," he said simply. "This is great, guys."

"A-Are you o-okay, Eh-Eh-Eddie?" Bill asked, his brows furrowed. 

 _No time like the present,_  Eddie thought in resignation.

"My mom just told me we're moving," he shrugged, though there was nothing nonchalant about his statement. "We leave on Saturday." 

"What?!" Richie yelled, and a chorus of indignant shouts followed.

"Wuh-Why is s-she doing this? What the h-hell is her puh-puh-puh-"

"Her fucking problem!" Richie completed for Bill.

Eddie raised up a placating hand at the group. "I know as much as you, okay? She said something about taking care of my aunt up in New York, and how we have to leave fucking immediately, apparently." 

"New York? This sucks, man!" Ben said, and once again they all started speaking at once, the same sentiment behind their complaints, and it wasn't anything polite towards his mother. Eddie couldn't bring himself to care.

"I don't wanna talk about this right now." He found a seemingly clear spot on the ground and sat down, legs crossed. "Let's just enjoy today, all right?" He looked up at all of his friends' faces, their expressions still closed up in anger. "Please?"

Richie heaved a deep sigh and sat beside him, everyone else following suit.

They spent the next couple of hours eating cake, making jokes, and not talking about Eddie's future, for which Eddie was incredibly grateful. That was how he wanted to remember them: silly, carefree, united. His lips prickled at the memory of kissing their Words, and he licked them distractedly. They had each other - they would be okay. 

It was fully dark now so, one by one, the Losers all set for home, stopping first to say goodbye to Eddie. Eddie hugged each of them fiercely, promises of writing and calling and visiting exchanged all around. Bill was the last to hug him, and Eddie used all of his self-restraint not to burst into tears. He barely managed it, and gave Bill a shaky smile as the boy mounted Silver.

"You c-coming, Rih-Richie?" Bill asked, turning his head back to squint at Richie, who had stood quietly to the side the whole time while Eddie was saying his goodbyes.

Richie raised a hand to Bill in a static wave. "You go on ahead, Big Bill. I'll be a minute."

Bill nodded, and cycled away. Only Eddie and Richie remained.

"Hey," Eddie muttered, his eyes to the ground as he scraped the toe of his sneaker on the dirt. His heart jackhammered inside his chest, and he swore it could feel it beat against his Words.

"Hey," Richie replied, pushing up his glasses. "I... I got you something for your birthday." He suddenly barked out a laugh. "Now I guess it could be your parting gift too!" He shook his head dejectedly. "Shit," he huffed.

He reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small rectangle. In the dim light, it took Eddie a second to recognize what it was: a cassette tape.

Eddie inched his hand forward and took it. Their fingers brushed for the briefest of seconds, then he retreated, holding the tape to his chest.

"Will you listen to it? Tonight?" Richie asked him, oddly shy, a hand scratching at the nape of his neck.

Eddie found himself nodding in agreement before he even understood what was being said.

"Only if you promise to come over later," Eddie said, and he had no idea he was going to say it until he did, but the words felt right as soon as they left his mouth. "We can listen to it together."

"Nah, it's best if you listen alone." There wasn't much light were they stood, only the moon illuminating their faces as they gazed at one another, but Eddie could have sworn Richie was blushing. "I'll still come over, though. If you want."

"I do! Want, that is." Eddie coughed, embarrassed by his quick reply. "I'll listen to it as soon as I get home."

Richie gave him a small smile in return. "Okay then. Guess I'll see you later, Eds."

"See you." 

They stood facing each other for one more moment. Eddie was debating whether to hug Richie as he had all the others, when suddenly Richie leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Richie had done that many times before, obviously - he liked kissing Eddie's cheeks almost as much as he liked pinching them. This time, however, Eddie couldn't help but feel it was different. Richie wasn't teasing him now, or playing a character; in the soft press of his chapped lips, Eddie could only feel a pure sort of affection.

Richie moved away just as fast as he had slanted in, already marching out of the Barrens as he shouted to Eddie in his British Gentleman Voice, "Catch you later, my dear!"

Eddie stayed where he was a minute longer, unmoving except for a hand pressed to his burning cheek in astonishment. He was glad he hadn't replied to Richie's farewell, or else he would have completed the Ben and Bev patented maneuver of kiss-blush-stutter. He smiled to himself and rushed to his bike, intent on getting home as soon as possible to listen to his birthday present.

 

* * *

 

When Eddie walked in his house, stopping by the entrance hall to hang his coat, he heard his mother calling for him.

"Eddie, honey, is that you? We have to talk about... Eddie!"

But Eddie was already scurrying past her, halfway up the stairs before she could yelp "Don't you dare ignore me, Eddie!"

He reached his room and slammed the door closed, effectively muting his mother's protests. Reaching inside his pants' pocket, he pulled out Richie's tape. He took his walkman from where it was sitting on his bedside table, placed the tape carefully into it, and sat down on his bed, his eyes not straying from the small device. 

Now that he was actually here, finger hovering over the play button, Eddie seemed to be unable to move. He felt like had a pretty good idea of what the mix was going to be, but a single shred of doubt was enough to paralyze him. He heard his mother shout for him again, and with a startle realized he didn't have the time to waste in useless contemplation - Richie was coming over soon. 

Riding on a high, remembering the kiss he had gotten not an hour before, Eddie lied back on his bed, put the headphones over his ears, took a puff of his aspirator, and pressed play.

The opening riff of _Africa_ started playing, tinny from the poor quality of his player, but still instantly recognizable. The drum rhythm and jazzy keyboard notes made Eddie grin hugely, both at merely listening to his favorite song, as well as by being one step closer to having his suspicions confirmed. _It could still be just a mix of all of the Losers' soulmate songs_ , Eddie tried to rationalize with himself. _It's too soon to tell._ So he settled in more comfortably in bed and closed his eyes, content in just enjoying the song, mouthing along to the lyrics and occasionally bopping his head.

The song faded out as it ended, and Eddie had a few terrifying seconds of silence to wonder what was going to happen next. He held his breath, bothered by the whistling sounds it was making as he wanted to pay full attention to what would come out of his headphones.

 _Lovesong_ started, and Eddie's heart nearly stopped; it then lurched and made up for its momentary hitch by starting to beat in double-time. Eddie completely missed the first verse and chorus, so overwhelmed he was by this momentous revelation. He tried focusing on the music, making an effort to hear the lyrics as if for the first time, but every beat of his racing heart seemed to echo loudly in his ears in a thump of _It's him, it's him, it's him_. 

As that song too reached its end, no other came next. The mix only had the two songs. _Their_ songs.

Eddie placed both hands over his face, not sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. He settled for hyperventilating instead, and took a new pump of his inhaler to try and calm himself. What was he going to do now? Richie was going to be there at any moment, for cripes' sake! Should he confirm everything if Richie asked, and he definitely would? But where would that leave them, if Eddie was leaving in two days?

They should just run away, Eddie mused. Finally fulfill his daydream of getting on a train away from Derry, leaving overbearing mother and murderous clown and everything else behind. 

He rewound the tape and pressed play again, hoping that the music would inspire him to figure things out. The tape played itself to completion one more time so he wound it back to the start, playing it again and again, losing himself in his thoughts; he lost track of how many times he listened to the two songs, the melodies winding together in his head until they became one.

Eddie was still listening when he heard faint noises coming from outside his window. He pressed the stop button on his walkman and took his headphones out, leaving both on the bed as he stood up to take a look. 

He opened the window and came face to face with Richie. The other boy was flushed, undoubtedly exerted from having just finished climbing the tree outside Eddie's window, like he always did when he wanted to see Eddie and not be bothered by his mom.

"Gimme a hand here, would ya, Eds?" Richie panted, one arm extended towards Eddie while the other still held onto a tree branch. Eddie took it and pulled Richie inside, both tumbling a bit, unbalanced. He let go of Richie's hand to grab at his shoulders, steadying him. 

"Thanks ever so much, my good fellow. Terribly sorry I'm late," Richie said, shaking dust off his shirt, the same lousy British accent he had used back at the Barrens tinging his voice now.

"You're not late, we didn't set a time. And would you please stop spreading dirt all over my room? I hate it when you do that!" Eddie rolled his eyes, but couldn't help a small grin from forming at the corner of his mouth. Richie was _here_. 

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. So!" Richie exclaimed, clapping his hands once for emphasis. "You-" he coughed once onto his closed fist, "You listen to it yet?"

Leave it to Richie to get straight to the point.

Eddie tilted his head towards his bed and raised his eyebrows, silently asking for Richie to follow him. He did, and after Eddie placed his walkman on the bedside table, they both sat down, legs extended in front of them as they leaned back on the headboard. Eddie laced his fingers on his lap, all of a sudden unsure of how to behave next to Richie.

"So?" Richie asked again, impatient.

"I did listen to it, Richie, yeah," Eddie confirmed quietly. 

"What... What did you think about it?" Richie was biting at his lip something fierce. Eddie couldn't look at him, unwilling to let Richie's obvious nervousness bounce back at him and make it all ten times harder.

"I thought it was really short," Eddie said, shooting a smile at Richie, then quickly looking back at his own clasped hands. "Only two songs?"

"Yeah, well... Sometimes I think two songs is all we need." 

_Let's run away, just you and me. We don't need no other stinking Words when we've got our own._

Eddie reeled back, startled by the clear memory of what Richie had jokingly said to Bev that day long ago in the Barrens, the day they all saw each other's marks. All but Eddie's, that is. No, no one had ever seen Eddie's Words but himself. He wondered if that should change that night.

The irony of recollecting Richie's comment about running away, shortly after entertaining the notion himself, was not lost on Eddie. He wondered if Richie had ever seriously considered it. Sometimes, he used to even wonder if Richie ever thought seriously about anything at all, but the mixtape currently sitting on his walkman gave him the answer for that.

Beside him, Richie let out a noise that was half groan, half whine. "You're killing me here, Eds. Are you really not gonna say anything?" Richie asked, a certain desperation on his tone. Eddie wanted to reach for him, comfort him somehow, but found himself too scared to move. 

He turned his head and faced Richie at last. "What do you want me to say? That I know you've got my favorite song on your wrist? That I've got yours on my ribs? That you're my soulmate and I'm yours?" Eddie's speech started off quiet, but he got so worked up that by the end of it he was whisper-shouting.

"Yes! That's exactly what I want you to say!" Richie shouted back, arms flying up, a weird combination of annoyance and elation showing on his face. Eddie glared at him to keep it down, so he continued in a lower voice, "You've already got yours too, then? You never said anything, so I wasn't sure..."

Eddie unconsciously put his hand to his left ribs, his knuckles brushing Richie as they still sat side by side on the small twin bed.

"Yeah, I did," Eddie nodded. "Just a few days ago, actually. I wanted to tell you, but..."

"It's okay. I understand." 

There was, however, one question itching at the back of Eddie's mind:

"If you didn't know I had gotten my Words, and you had no way of knowing for sure what was my favorite song... Why did you make me the mix? How could you be so sure it was me?" 

Richie gave him a radiant smile in response. "Of course I was sure, Eddie Spaghetti. How could it be anyone else?"

Eddie was thrown by the matter-of-fact way in which Richie answered him. He had spent months steeping in uncertainty and self-doubt, and here Richie was, as confident that they were soulmates as he could be that the sun would rise again in the morning.

They sat without talking for a moment, getting used to the fact that this was it, no turning back; they were meant to find each other, to be together. And they had; they were. 

It was Richie who first broke the silence. He shifted slightly towards Eddie, putting a distance of mere inches between their bodies, and looked at him. But not at his face - at his torso. 

"Can I see them?" He mumbled softly, hand wavering in the space between them, as if halfway to a touch he had thought better of it. "Your Words?"

Eddie blushed from his neck to the tips of his ears. He had seen all of the Losers' marks, kissed them even, Richie's included. But now, sitting on his bed at night with Richie beside him, some unidentified emotion gleaming in his eyes... It all felt too intimate - too real. 

He nodded in confirmation before he could dwell much on it. His hands went to the hem of his shirt, and he pulled it off without a second thought. He still hadn't got around to buying tape to cover it up so, as soon as his shirt was out, thrown haphazardly on the floor beside him, his mark was out in the open, available for Richie's keen inspection.

"Woah," Richie said dazedly, staring unabashedly at Eddie's Words, though his cheeks too blushed a deep scarlet.

Richie's hand finally closed the distance, inching forward to stroke Eddie's mark. Eddie flinched involuntarily, not expecting the shiver that went through him at the contact.

Richie immediately took his hand back. "Sorry," he said.

"No, it's..." Eddie breathed deeply, and eyed Richie straight on. "You can touch it." 

So Richie, painstakingly slow, laid his hand back on Eddie's ribs, caressing them so gently that Eddie felt like his heart would break with such tenderness. Richie took his time, alternating between just rubbing his fingers back and forth over the Words, to going over every letter with the tip of his index, as if he was the one who had personally written them on Eddie's skin. Eddie supposed he was.

Richie's hand moved nowhere other than Eddie's side as he thoroughly explored his mark, but Eddie could feel his touch reverberate everywhere. He thought back on the first time he had learned of Richie's mark, and how his whole body seemed to quiver, like a magnet which stood close to its opposite, but not enough to be attached to it. He was close enough now, and the thrills he felt coursing through his body were enough to make him sweat despite the cold November air.

After a few minutes Richie moved away, his hand going to his face to adjust his glasses. "Woah," he repeated his exclamation from earlier, though with a much shakier voice. "Yowza... Yowza indeed, boss."

Eddie huffed a laugh and shook his head fondly. "You're such a nerd." 

"Yeah, but I'm _your_ nerd!" Richie replied, and they spent a moment just smiling stupidly at each other.

Then reality set in, and Eddie's smile fell.

Richie noticed his mood change, and reached for Eddie's hand, holding it and squeezing once. "What's wrong?" he asked. 

The laugh Eddie gave now was wet as he tried to keep himself from crying. "What's wrong? Oh, I don't know, maybe how we only just found each other and now I'm leaving in two fucking days?" A stubborn tear slipped then, and he wiped it away forcefully with his free hand. 

What he didn't expect was the genuine laugh he got from Richie. 

"That's it?" Richie gave him a crooked grin, as if Eddie was only moving down the street, and not to another state.

"What do you mean that's it? That's plenty!"

"Eddie, my dear, my sweet, my beloved... I don't know if you know this, but it's gonna take a hell of a fucking _lot_ to drag me away from you."

Eddie rolled his eyes, but couldn't help smiling back at Richie. He looked down at their joint hands, his left one holding Richie's right, so close to the wrist that bore the words Richie had just mentioned. He shook his head, unbelieving. "I never thought this would be the lyric I would give to someone's soulmark one day," he confessed in a small voice. "If you asked me, I would've said it would be the end of the chorus, when he sings about taking time to do the things I never had..." 

He squeezed Richie's hand, finding in the touch the strength to look up at his soulmate's eyes. "That's me, I guess. Always too scared to do anything."

"Well, Eds, no offense but that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and that's coming from _me_." They both chuckled at that, but Richie sobered up quickly, not yet done saying his piece. "You're like, the bravest person I know. No, listen to me, you are," Richie reinforced when he noticed Eddie shaking his head in disagreement. "You really fucking are."

They stared at one another, gray gazing into blue, unflinching, unafraid.

"Will you kiss me?" Richie murmured, and Eddie only listened because they were already so close together.

Eddie peered down at Richie's lips for a second. Then his eyes veered even further down, to where Richie's right arm lay on his thigh, their hands still entwined; he looked back up at Richie's eyes, trying to gauge if he had got his idea. Richie nodded once, understanding. He untangled their fingers and lifted his arm, leaving it raised at chest-level between the two of them. Eddie reached for it and held it by the wrist with both hands; then, slowly, still looking up, Eddie pulled on Richie's cotton wristband and removed it. 

He tossed the piece of cloth somewhere on the bed, and looked down at last. The same mark he had seen months ago was now once again in front of him, and Eddie reckoned he would never get tired of seeing it. He swiped his thumb across it once, and heard Richie's hitching breath in response. Then he leaned down and pressed his slightly parted lips to it.

He could feel Richie's rapid pulse vibrating underneath his lips; he exhaled slowly and felt the skin get warmer. His tongue accidentally gave the barest of brushes against the Words, and Richie suddenly yanked his arm back, breathing much harder than he had been minutes ago.

"Right!" He squealed, and coughed to correct his high pitch. "Right. Great. Pip pip and tally-ho, my good fellow."

Eddie pressed his lips against one another, not because he wanted to keep the feel of Richie's mark on them for longer (though that was a great plus), but to try to stop himself from laughing. He managed to hold on for a couple a seconds, but one more look at Richie's embarrassed face and he was in stitches, laughter exploding out of him in loud guffaws. Richie followed him shortly after, and they spent a good time shaking with convulsed glee, hands over their mouths so as to not attract the attention of Eddie's mother. When Eddie felt like he was finally starting to get some composure, he noticed Richie throwing him a wicked grin. He tried moving away, but wasn't quick enough to escape Richie's nimble fingers as they attacked his bare torso, tickling him in all the known spots. They laughed some more, Eddie weakly kicking Richie's stomach to get him off, as the assault had left Eddie lying on his back, Richie on top of him. 

Richie relented and sat back up, allowing Eddie, who still let out a few giggles, to do the same. It took a little while longer for their laughter to finally dwindle, and they sighed contentedly when it did. Eddie grabbed his shirt from the floor and put it back on, Richie doing the same with his wristband.

"By the way, about what you were saying before..." Richie started tentatively. "I've read that, even though your soulmate chooses the song for you, the precise lyrics you end up having as your Words usually say more about you then about your soulmate. So, basically, we kind of made those Words together." He shrugged one shoulder, trying to act casual as his hand fidgeted on his thigh, picking at invisible lint on his pants.

Eddie gave Richie a playful shove. "You read that, huh? How come you're such a connoisseur of soulmarks?" His imagination came up with an image of Richie sitting alone in the Public Library, dozens of books splayed open around him as he enthusiastically read up on everything soulmate-related. The thought made him smile.

"Shut up," Richie huffed out, shoving him back lightly. The Voice he put on then was gruff, a slight New York accent to it. "A man can't do some reading now? I like knowin' this kinda stuff, so what?"

Eddie lifted his shoulders, one hand raised in a placating gesture. "So nothing! I think it's cute, I like it." Feeling bold, he reached forward and brushed a strand of Richie's hair behind his ear. "I like you."

Richie's cheeks burned bright red, but he smiled sappily. "You have to like me, I'm your soulmate."

Hearing Richie call him his soulmate so openly gave Eddie butterflies in his stomach, but he pretended to be grumpy, his eyes squinting as he replied:

"I don't have to do anything. I like you because I like you."

Richie cackled, and Eddie broke his serious expression to join him.

"Okay then, Mr. Bossy Pants, _you_ don't have to do anything, but I have to go back home before my parents find out I'm gone." He switched to another of his Voices, "If dey do, dey weel keel me, senhorr. Dey weel keel me _slow_."

Eddie laughed again, his heart lighter than it had possibly ever been. "Beep beep, Richie." 

They both stood up, and Richie went for the open window. Before he climbed it, though, he turned back to Eddie. They gazed at each other one last time, and suddenly Eddie sprung towards him, wrapping his arms around Richie's waist in a tight hug.

Richie hugged back just as firmly for a long moment. His shirt pressed comfortably to Eddie's cheek as he pressed his face to Richie's shoulder, and he felt like he could stay in that embrace for as long as he lived and not mind it one bit. Sooner than either would have liked, Richie pulled away, though he remained close as he moved his arms from Eddie's back to hold his face with both hands. One thumb swiped gently across Eddie's warm cheek as Richie pressed their foreheads together. 

"Don't you worry your pretty little head, okay, Eds? I'm here. I'm always gonna be here." The _I will always love you_ was left unsaid, but they both heard it anyway.

He tilted his head up and pressed a quick kiss to Eddie's forehead.

Eddie sighed and nodded. He took a step back, putting some distance between himself and Richie, or else he wouldn't have been able to let him go.

"Okay. G'night, Richie."

Richie was sitting on the window, one leg inside the room and one out, as he turned to Eddie with one last blinding smile. "Good night, soulmate!"

Then he was gone.

 

* * *

  

Eddie spent the entirety of his last day in Derry packing. It took a long time because he refused to let his mother help him; he still wasn't ready to be in the same room with her for more than five minutes, and was enjoying his last moments of solitude before their long drive down to New York. Sonia for once didn't complain - she knew she had ultimately won this time, after all.

After he had finished putting all of his clothes, books and toys in their appropriately-labeled boxes, Eddie sat down on his bed and contemplated his empty room.

Truth be told, he wouldn't miss it very much. He felt no special connection to his house, or even to Derry in general as a matter of fact. The only thing he would miss, the thing that made up for a small room, and a stuffy house, and even a city haunted by a terrible creature, was his friends. He would miss them all so dearly he thought he would choke without them, as if they were the aspirator that gave his soul fresh air.

He leaned forward and grabbed his walkman from his bedside table, the only item left to pack. He opened it and carefully took out Richie's mixtape, wrapping it in tissue paper; he then placed both walkman and tape inside his backpack, where he had put a few essentials for the trip (mostly just his medicine, and a change of clothes). He zipped his backpack shut and shouldered it, leaving his room without looking back.

Outside, where his mother had started stuffing boxes and bags onto the trunk of their car, Eddie found the whole of the Losers' Club waiting for him.

He felt his lower lip start to tremble before he even opened his mouth. "You guys," he said shakily. "You didn't have to come."

"Bullshit, Eddie. You really think we wouldn't see you off?" It was Stan who replied, but the others all nodded in agreement.

So Eddie hugged them all goodbye, as he had the day before. This time, however, he couldn't keep the tears from running down his face as he reached Bill. He just stood in front of Bill, looking skyward to try to stop more tears from falling, so Bill stepped up and pulled him into a hug. 

"Y-you c-c-call, okay?" Bill demanded as they parted, holding onto both of Eddie's shoulders, steadying him as he shook with sniffs and gasps. "You c-call eh-eh-every day, Eh-Eddie." Eddie nodded minutely, wiping the back of his hand across his nose.

Richie approached him last, and Eddie started a new round of sobs just by looking at him. Richie hurried forward and swept Eddie into his arms, placing Eddie's head on the crook of his shoulder to mute the wailing sounds he was making. 

"Shh, it's all right, Eddie." Richie tried to comfort him, stroking his hair and making hushing sounds in his ear, but Eddie just shook his head, snot covering Richie's shirt as he rubbed his face on his shoulder. Neither of them minded it. "Distance is nothing, okay?"

Eddie raised his head and looked straight into Richie's eyes. He heaved a trembling breath, trying to control his sobbing, and whispered, "However far away, right?"

Richie nodded, his eyes glistening. "A whole fucking lot," he whispered back, in reminiscence of what he had said the previous night.

"Eddie, dear, we really have to get going!" his mother called from the car as she finished cramming the last of the boxes into it. 

It was the hardest thing Eddie had ever done, pulling away from Richie's embrace. Harder than getting through a bad asthma attack, or going down to the sewers to face a monster, but nonetheless he did it. Richie walked back to stand with the other Losers (Bev had her head on Ben's shoulder, and she too seemed to be weeping), and Eddie turned around in the direction of the car, still crying loudly. He opened the car's passenger door but, before getting in, wheeled back around to take one last look at his friends. 

They were all looking back at him, some with small smiles on their faces, some with a hand raised in a wave, but all of their eyes showed the same deep sadness Eddie himself felt. He fixed his eyes on Richie in one last desperate attempt to memorize his features. He was smiling, mouth closed so Eddie couldn't see his slightly large teeth ( _Would he get braces soon?_ Eddie wondered, and felt a new pang in his chest at the thought of not being there to see it), mended Coke-bottle glasses seeming to amplify the love in Richie's eyes. Or maybe it wasn't the lenses at all.

Eddie gave him a final curt nod, turned back around, got in the car, and drove away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me what you think of it so far!
> 
> Fun tidbit, because I couldn't find a way to add it to the story: Patty's favourite song is, as you've seen, Free Fallin' by Tom Petty. Stan's song? Learning to Fly, by Tom Petty. That's some serious soulmate business, y'all!!!
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr [@touzier](https://touzier.tumblr.com)


	2. 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! First of all, I'd like to thank you for the response to the first chapter, it really means a lot.
> 
> For this second and final chapter, I've decided to go with the feel of the book and change perspectives, so it's Richie's POV this time. No offence, Eddie, but Richie's so much easier to write!
> 
> As before, all songs mentioned in this chapter can be found in [this playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/bzbrit/playlist/63LfLDsePAmUkNck24Jqfr). It's... Eclectic.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this last installment!

 

* * *

   

_Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies._

David Mitchell

 

_And when you appear_  
_All the rivers sound in my body, bells shake the sky,_  
_And a hymn fills the world._  
_Only you and I, only you and I, my love,  
_ _Listen to it._

Pablo Neruda

 

_Let us go then, you and I,  
_ _When the evening is spread out against the sky._

T. S. Eliot

 

* * *

 

The good thing about being sort-of rich - okay, one of the many good things about being sort-of rich, Richie thought with little guilt - was being able to afford a first-class plane ticket. He leaned back on his comfortable chair and put on his headphones, glad of the small mercy of not having anyone sat beside him.

People always wanted him to give them a bit of the Rich "Records" Tozier experience whenever they recognized him, and while he usually didn't mind complying, today he was definitely not in the mood to make nice with a nosey passenger. First class gave him the privacy he desperately needed, especially if he wanted to get to Derry without having a mental breakdown.

He hadn't slept since Mike Hanlon (and how weird it was to think of that name, after so many years not even remembering its owner existed) called him the previous night, but though his eyes were heavy, he refused to take off his contacts and indulge in a quick nap before arriving at his destination. He was afraid that, if he slept, memories from a summer 27 years past, memories he wasn't aware of having lost until hearing Mike's voice, would finally come crashing down to him, and the weight of them all would crush him to death.

The process had begun when he answered Mike's call, and the first missing piece Richie got back was the most important one, the thing that killed him inside for having forgotten in the first place, was actually six pieces - Mike, Ben, Bill, Beverly, Stan, and Eddie. Mike told him It was back, and Richie was instantly transported to the past. In the scene he watched with his mind's eye, just as clearly as if he was standing in that open field (the Barrens, they used to call it), he was a child, no older than thirteen, and around him, forming a circle, were his six best friends.

Not much had come after that. He knew that they had fought something, some It, together all those years ago, and that they had barely made it out alive. But other than that, and an unplaceable feeling of complete and utter terror, Richie didn't yet remember much at all. He knew he eventually would, so he made no effort to try to force it. He didn't try poking at the memories to see if any more would leak out, but he didn't smother them either, instead leaving them untouched in a corner of his mind, hoping they would stay quiet until the moment he couldn't ignore them anymore.

Richie called for a flight attendant to bring him a glass of scotch, then grabbed his phone and opened his music app. He needed a way to get out of his head, and music always did the trick for him. It was one of the reasons why he loved his job as a radio DJ so much: in it he could combine his two greatest loves, music and playing characters. He liked to joke - to himself, that was, he didn't go around telling people something so personal - that his Words were directed not at a person, but at his work. It would certainly be a good explanation as to why he was pushing forty and still hadn't met his soulmate.

Speaking of, his mark itched again, and he scratched at it absently. It had first started itching shortly after Mike's call, and since then the sensation kept coming and going at random intervals. It was not exactly an itch, but more like a tingling, as if someone was lightly brushing a feather over it. He scratched it again, not quite getting any relief; his short nails couldn't do much against the thick leather of the wristband he wore over his Words.

There were thousands of songs saved to Richie's phone (it was part of his job to be musically in the know, after all), but he skipped through every one that came in on his shuffle, not letting any of them play for more than a few seconds before moving to the next. They were either too fast and made him antsy, or too slow and risked lulling him to dangerous sleep.

Weirdly enough, the only song he managed to listen in its entirety since boarding the plane was John Mayer's cover of Free Fallin'. Weird because he didn't particularly like the man (he had interviewed him once, and thought he was kind of a dick) and because he didn't particularly like song either - it always made his heart heavy, for some reason. But today he listened to it from start to finish, and for the few minutes it played, his fear quieted down enough for him to feel like he wasn't about to puke out his liquid dinner.

Then the track ended and was followed by a Strokes song, which Richie promptly skipped after the first strum of guitar reached his ears, starting the process again.

Richie shook his head at himself, leg bouncing anxiously as he skimmed through his extensive music library. It was insane, what he was doing. Flying all the way across the country when he had a show to do that very night, and the night after that. His boss had sounded less than pleased when Richie told him over the phone how he was taking an impromptu sabbatical for a few days. _No, don't ask, it's better if you don't know,_  Richie had said. _I don't really know why myself, but I know I've got to go_ , was what he left unsaid, worried that if he did, he would've lost his job as soon as he clicked the phone shut. He was risking his job, his career, maybe even his reputation in the biz, and all for what? To fulfill a promise he had made when he was a kid and couldn't even remember the details to? Not to mention the sparse details he did remember were enough to make him want to drink until he drowned them back into the dark pit of his mind which they never should've left.

It was pure madness, no tiptoeing around it.

But at the same time, combined with the nausea and terror that definitely still churned the scotch in his stomach, there was also a gut instinct telling him that, for the first time in a long time, maybe since he'd been thirteen, he was doing something right. It was as if Richie had left some vital part of himself back in his hometown, and every mile the plane brought him closer to it the pull got stronger, so that when his feet finally touched Derry ground, he would snap back into it and be whole again.

His mark prickled strongly, the sensation not uncomfortable but still odd. Richie finished his drink in one large gulp and rose from his seat to go check on his mark in the bathroom, leaving behind his phone still playing a song he wouldn't have listened to anyway.

He got in the plane's tiny bathroom and closed the door behind him, turning around awkwardly in the minuscule space to inspect his reflection in the mirror.

The face he saw staring back at him didn't surprise him, considering how lousy he felt, but it was still not a pretty image. Hair in tangles from being continuously pulled in distress over the past day, skin way too pale for a man who lived in LA, blue eyes tinged red from lack of sleep and wearing his contacts for too long, purple bags underneath them like bruises. He opened the tap and splashed cold water on his tired face, reaching blindly for a paper towel to dry it with. To complete his meager attempt at waking himself up, he gave his cheeks a couple of hard pats, eyes bulging to try to keep them from drooping.

Feeling slightly more alert, Richie looked down at his arms, both of them extended before him, palms down, hands shaking slightly (he desperately craved a smoke). He reached out with his left hand and unclasped the buckle on his expensive black leather wristband. The bracelet opened, and he placed it on the edge of the sink. His newly-exposed mark glistened with sweat under the bathroom's fluorescent lights, and he rubbed at it by turning his wrist back and forth inside his left fist, the itch gone for the time being.

Other than itching, his mark showed no sign of having something wrong. There was no rash, no bug bite, no scratch that could justify the persistent feeling, just as there hadn't been the other times Richie checked on it since the itching started. His wrist was slightly paler than the rest of his arm, but that was just a consequence of it having less exposure to the sun, due to it always being concealed. The Words themselves were just as striking as they had been when he first got them at twelve years old, never fading,  the small calligraphy just as neat. All in all, it was a perfectly reasonable soulmark.

It had never led him to his soulmate, sure, but it was nonetheless physically flawless.

It wasn't that Richie hadn't tried looking for his soulmate. He wasn't like one of those progressive people who ignored their Words altogether and shacked up without ever showing their partner their Words, too confident in their love to care about what destiny supposedly had assigned for them. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Richie supposed, but he was very much a traditionalist in that sense. He always made sure to check the Words of whoever he was dating if he thought the relationship could actually go somewhere, and cordially ended things every time he found out they didn't match. Being as much a romantic as a people pleaser, Richie had done his fair share of exchanging Words in the past twenty years or so. None of them got him anywhere other than single at best and depressed at worst, and he was beginning to seriously consider it was time to stop trying and resign himself to a life in which his only companions were his Voices.

He read his Words to himself for what might have been the millionth time, scoffing. _Drag me away..._ _Gotta meet first so I can prove my undying devotion, now don't we_? He slapped his mark lightly twice, as he had done to his cheeks earlier, and put his bracelet back on.

Though, Richie mused as he made his way back to his seat, there might be an up side to not having met his soulmate yet. In this particular moment, it meant that he had much less explaining to do as to why he was so intent on fulfilling a promise made decades ago, to people he hadn't remembered until very recently, about finishing a job he had no idea he had even started.

The plane began its descent into Bangor International Airport, quaking a bit as it landed. Richie slowly blinked awake, having finally succumbed to sleep about halfway through the flight. He had no recollection of dreaming at all during his unintentional catnap, which was all he could have wished for. He did, however, wake up feeling like he was about to say something, breath stuck in his throat, lips trying to form a shape but slacking as soon as Richie became aware of the subconscious motion. It was something to do with the reason why he was so anxious to return, he knew that much, but he didn't know what. His mark itched again, but he paid it no mind. He rubbed his eyes (they hurt something fierce from having slept with his contacts on) and yawned as he stared blearily out the window.

The early morning sky was gray, heavy clouds not pouring down at that moment, though the tarmac shimmered in evidence of earlier rain as he disembarked. The bleak weather was one of the few things Richie hadn't forgotten about his childhood - he loved to boast to whomever would listen about how it was easy to be happy in the constantly sunny LA, but growing up in morose Maine built character. Now, actually being back, feeling his bones ache and knowing that his disheveled hair was curling from the humidity, Richie found that living through something was much more intense than talking about it. For the first time since receiving Mike's call, Richie allowed himself to try to understand at least an inkling of the situation he was throwing himself into, though his emotions were still too chaotic to categorize.

He sighed heavily, not sure if in defeat or for having an old weight finally lifted off his shoulders.

He was home.

 

* * *

 

Richie headed from the airport straight to Derry's Town House, where his manager had reserved him a room at last notice. He threw on a pair of shades and pulled up the hood of his jacket as he got in a cab, still not in the mood for idle chitchat in case he was recognized. He honestly had no idea if he even had achieved the level of stardom necessary to have a following in the middle of Fuckall, ME, but he'd rather not risk it.

All the way to the Town House, he must have exchanged no more than a dozen words, but exhaustion had taken over him in such a way that he didn't even realize how uncommon that behavior was, for Rich Tozier standards at least.

("Check in to the Hotel Bella Muerte, por favor," he had said dryly to the receptionist.

The reference went over her head as she replied "Um, this is the Town House, sir."

Richie rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses, then gave his name and credit card to the woman without further comment.)

Any fear of whatever memories threatened to burst from previously well-locked vaults inside his mind were overpowered by sheer bone-deep tiredness, and Richie wanted nothing more than to catch some Z's before alerting Mike of his arrival.

The hotel room's door closed with a soft click behind him, and he looked around with minimal interest.

It was a simple room, not like the ones he had gotten used to staying in overnight when flying abroad for work, but he'd hardly expected luxury in Derry. There was not much in it other than a king-size bed, a dresser with an old TV on top of it, a nightstand and a minibar. A closed door to the right Richie supposed led to a bathroom, though he didn't open it. He dropped his bag unceremoniously on the floor, sunglasses flying as he hurtled them across the room, not caring if they broke (they didn't, but instead landed neatly on the dresser beside the TV). He dedicated a few seconds to taking out and putting away his contacts, but otherwise did absolutely nothing but throw himself face-down on the bed, and was asleep in minutes.

He woke up a couple of hours later, groaning. He had forgotten to shut off the blinds and the sun, which had appeared from among the rain clouds, shone directly on his face. Richie ducked his head under the pillows to escape the glaring light and reached out an arm, blindly feeling for his phone on the nightstand. He got it, checked the time - 12:39 pm - and noticed he had gotten a text from Mike. The text, which Richie had received about an hour earlier, had an address and a time. The Losers Club of '89 was supposed to meet for lunch, an initial catch-up before... Richie didn't know exactly what, but definitely something less fun than eating hors d'oeuvres and discussing who had wrinkled the most.

Mike's message stated their rendezvous time at one pm, so Richie guessed he still had time for a quick shower before meeting his former best friends.

If you asked any of Richie's work colleagues, interviewees, and even the occasional date, you would know he didn't care much for punctuality. Things would happen sooner or they would happen later, so why should he care about such an inane detail as precision? But today, as he picked up a plain black t-shirt and some faded jeans from his bag, he actually felt anxious to get to the restaurant on time. The magnetic pull in his chest was stronger than ever, and he felt on the brink of something important. He made his way to the en-suite bathroom, already turning on the shower as he undressed.

Maybe it was just a desire to get this nonsense over with and go back to his regular life, he argued with himself, though deep down he knew it wasn't that. He definitively longed for home, but the feeling that made him rush was different from the fear of returning to the belly of the beast. Against all odds, he actually felt... Happy.

He unclasped his wristband and examined his Words for a second. They thankfully hadn't itched since he'd woken up, so he spared them no second thought as he hopped in the shower. Not ten minutes later he was already clothed, contact lenses back on, phone and room key in hand as he went out the door, towards whatever the hell was expecting him at lunch.

 

* * *

 

A bell sounded above Richie's head as heopened the door to the little hole-in-the-wall Chinese place Mike had directed him to. He put down his hoodie and stomped his feet a few times on the welcome mat, shaking off the bit of rain he had caught on his way to the restaurant. Before he'd had the chance to scan the place for anyone familiar, a tiny, smiling woman approached him.

"Party of Michael Hanlon?" she asked merely with the purpose of formality, for she was already leading Richie by the arm towards a room in the back. "Come with me."

He nodded in response anyway, a little dumbstruck by the speed in which it was all happening. He thought he'd have a minute or two to quietly observe his friends from afar, listen in on their laughter or cringe at their awkward silence. In other words, he wanted to feel the room before going in.

It was a trick used to pull all the time back in the day, when he did stand-up at bars and restaurants in the LA area at the beginning of his career. Minutes before his set was scheduled to start he would stand in the wings just offstage, sneaking glances at the audience to try and estimate their level of hospitality. According to how loud the conversation was going, or how many bottles of beer he saw on top of tables, he slightly adjusted his set to accommodate the crowd. On one of his very first shows, still green and overly excitable, he had ended up going full-in with a joke about kinky sex on the first date that fell completely flat on a lukewarm crowd. Since then, he had learned that knowing what you were getting yourself into was crucial to putting on a good show. The technique hadn't failed him then, and he was loathe to not be able to use it now, in what was probably the most important performance he'd ever have to put on.

The waitress pushed a curtain of beads aside with the hand not holding onto Richie's arm, and he didn't have enough time to make up an excuse to wait a while before he tumbled inside the room and came face-to-face with his friends for the first time in almost thirty years.

The Losers seemed to share Richie's lack of regard to punctuality, for it was around ten minutes past one and only Mike Hanlon and Ben Hanscom had arrived. At the sound of the beads clashing against one another, the two men stopped their conversation and turned toward the door, surveying Richie, who sized them up right back.

Ben was almost a new person - his child fat had turned into defined muscle, chubby cheeks giving way to a sculpted face and loose sweatshirts replaced by a snug-fitting blue oxford shirt. But he still had the same sandy hair and kind eyes, and Richie recognized him in an instant. Mike was more like the version Richie knew at thirteen, though he too had changed: his hair was graying at the sides, crows feet on the corner of his eyes and a slight beer belly hiding behind a wool vest. His posture was lousy, and he held himself like he had ten extra years than his natural forty hanging off his back.

Richie's heart lurched seeing them again after so long, as if it had dusted off previously ignored corners in which he stored all the love he had for his friends. He swallowed the lump in his throat and disguised his emotions the best way he knew how.

"Mike, you bastard, how did you know I have a thing for salt and pepper, and I don't mean your choice of venue. Ben Hanscom, did you forget the other half of you back at home? Go run and get it, we'll wait here." Richie had his arms spread wide, a teasing grin on his face. One other thing he had learned in his line of business was that, when in doubt, it was always better to overdo it. He turned his charm up to eleven and hoped they wouldn't see it for the act it was.

Mike and Ben grinned back at him, their heads shaking fondly as they stood up from where they were sitting perpendicularly at a corner of the long rectangular table, taking turns to hug Richie tightly. There were no words to describe how seeing the two men made Richie feel. A warmth spread through him, from cheeks to fingertips, better than a glass of malt in front of a fireplace on Christmas Eve. At the same time, a chill went down his spine, dread making him salivate, nausea so strong it made him dizzy. 

The whirlpool of emotions ultimately got the better of him, and his grin faltered as he swayed on his feet. Ben grasped him by the shoulder and forced him to sit down in the chair beside the one he had been occupying earlier, putting Richie directly in front of the beaded doorway.

"Take a breath, old friend," Ben instructed in a soothing voice. "The first minute or so can be quite a doozy."

"Doozy, floozy, caboosey, Benny Boy. I've had them all, no need to worry about me." Sitting down helped Richie regain some of his composure, and he plastered the smile back as soon as he felt like he wouldn't ruin its effect by barfing all over Ben's nice cowboy boots.

"I've only seen this with Ben and Bill so far, but I expect it will happen in some degree to all of us today," Mike said. "It's good to see you, Richie."

"Where are the other rascals, anyway?" Richie asked as he run a hand through his hair, mostly back to his normal self. His eyes roamed the table, as though the missing people would materialize in the vacant chairs as soon as he mentioned their absence. "God knows I admire a grand entrance, but I'm afraid I'll go stir crazy if I don't get a stir fry in me within the next five minutes."

Mike laughed at his subpar wordplay, while Ben simply huffed and took a sip of the glass of whiskey he had in front of him.

"They texted me, said they'll be here soon," Mike replied. "Why don't you have something to drink in the meantime?"

Mike was having a beer, but Richie decided to follow Ben and order a neat whiskey. The same woman from before brought Richie his drink, and he sipped at it absently. Memories flourished in his head more and more every minute he spent talking with Mike and Ben, but so far nothing related to the reason why he had agreed to come back.

Mostly, it was the little things.

He remembered how Ben used to be good with his hands - Ben's steady grip as he handled... something with a pair of tongs, the smell of hot metal - upon learning he had become an architect ( _You the one who designed the new BBC headquarters?_ he said with genuine awe. _I've been there, that building is fucking_ _dope, man_ ). Mike's childish curiosity had translated into him becoming head librarian, which made perfect sense to Richie. A flash of an image suddenly assaulted him: Mike passing by him in his bike, basket full of borrowed books as he rode to the library to return them, undoubtedly all read though he knew Mike had picked them up just days before.

Richie was so far enjoying the trip down memory lane, but he knew at any moment it could take a sharp turn towards somewhere much darker, to a place he wouldn't be able to come back from once he reached it. So he was thankful for a change of pace when he heard the beaded curtain move, and saw Beverly come in.

What he didn't much appreciate was the curling scream Beverly let out as soon as she walked in the room. He grimaced, watching with one open eye as she placed a hand over her mouth, though it made no difference as she had stopped screaming, mouth simply gaping open as she stared with bugging eyes at... Ben.

Shit.

A swarm of memories exploded on Richie's brain, and he saw flashes of them superposed on his actual sight, so he closed his eyes to avoid the double-vision. The scenes were all centered on Beverly and Ben: the two of them holding hands as they left school together for the day, sharing a love seat in Mike's living room during movie night, eating off of the same cotton candy at a Fourth of July parade... How devastated Ben had been when Beverly's parents got a divorce and she and her mom moved to Chicago.

Because Ben and Bev were soulmates. Shitting _shit_.

Ben shot up from his seat and headed straight to Beverly with sure steps. No words were exchanged between them before the hand over her mouth was replaced by Ben's lips as he engaged her in a passionate kiss. Richie raised both his eyebrows at the Nicholas Sparks-worthy display, but a stern glare from Mike made him keep his mouth shut.

"Ben... Oh my God, it's you," Beverly said in a shaky voice when the kiss ended.

Ben embraced her, one hand on her waist and the other caressing her hair as she laid her head on his chest. He said nothing in response, but just held her for a long moment. Richie was about to yell at them to get a room when they finally parted, Ben going back to his place beside him as Bev took the seat in front of Ben. Their hands found each other's over the table as if the thought of being apart for even a second was too much for them to bear.

"Well, that wasn't awkward at all," Richie said.

"Beep-beep, Richie," both Ben and Beverly said the old trick to make Richie shut up in unison, then laughed heartily about it.

Richie smiled too, affected by their contagious joy. He was truly happy for them, even if the smallest part of him was jealous. Why couldn't he get his own you-had-me-at-hello, Tom-Hanks-and-Meg-Ryan moment?

"Yeah, yeah, you know you've missed me," he said.

Bev's smile faded. "I -- I did miss you... I missed all of you." She turned to Mike, hands still clasped with Ben's. "God, Mike, if you knew everything all along, why didn't you say something?" She was obviously referring to her and Ben's soulmate status, and Richie had to agree she had a point. Mike knew about them, and had wittingly kept them apart.

"I couldn't risk it, Bev, I'm so sorry," Mike said. "What if I told you about Ben, and being reunited made you two remember things, remember It, sooner than you were supposed to?" He shook his head, looking down at his hands. "I couldn't take that risk."

"I understand," Ben spoke for the first time since Bev's arrival. His eyes were staring unmoving at her face, and she relaxed under his gaze, shoulders sagging. "It makes sense. I just wish it didn't suck so bad."

"You and me both, old pal," Mike smiled sadly.

They didn't have to wait long until the next reunion moment. Not five minutes after Bev, along came Bill. Though he was greeted with the same level of enthusiasm as all others (with the exception of Ben and Beverly, of course), the dynamics of the group noticeably changed with his arrival. They no longer looked at Mike for answers, but instead fell into the old pattern of following Big Bill's lead, as they had done when they were kids. Mike seemed content in passing the baton, falling into the background of the conversation. They still spoke only of trivial matters, waiting for the group to be complete before getting things started.

Richie had decided shortly after Bill sat to his right that it was past the time for polite waiting, and went ahead and ordered his lunch from the waitress, whom he learned was called Rose. He had just taken a mouthful of sweet and sour pork when Bill spoke out:

"What of the others, Mike?"

"Eddie probably slept a little late," Mike said. He too had ordered, and calmly spooned his soup as he addressed Bill. "He told me he was driving all the way from New York, so he must've gotten here pretty tired. But he texted me a few hours ago to say he got in town, should be here soon."

"And S-Stan?" Bill's stutter wasn't nearly as bad as Richie knew it had been when he was a kid, but every now and then he still struggled over a sound. Weirdly, he seemed to be getting progressively more stuck with each sentence he uttered.

Mike passed his eyes briefly through the table, eyeing all of the present Losers before focusing back on Bill. He put his spoon down and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

"I had hoped to mention this only when we were all here, but since you asked... Stan won't be coming today. He's dead."

The sweet and sour went like a ton of bricks down Richie's throat, and he eased it with a hefty gulp of whiskey. Across from him, Beverly placed a hand over her chest, the other still unmoved within Ben's hold. Bill slouched in his chair and hung his head down; Richie could see a reflection of the room's bright lights on his bald spot, but for one of the first times in his life, couldn't care less about cracking a joke.

"D-Did It-?" Bill started.

Mike shook his head. "No, it wasn't It. Not directly, at least. I called his house again this morning to confirm his presence, and learned from his wife that Stan committed suicide last night."

The table was silent for a moment, respectfully holding a minute of condolence in Stan's honor. Only the scrape of metal against cheap porcelain could be heard as Richie moved his fork around in his plate, all appetite gone.

It was 13:43 pm when the last guest of their lunch arrived.

Richie had been lazily checking his emails on his phone, ignoring the ones from his boss. Bill was in the middle of sharing the plot of his latest horror novel, Ben hanging to his every word - he was apparently a huge fan, which gave them all quite a laugh when he confessed it. The sound of beads clashing against one another made Bill cut off his tale of a disgusting bug, and everyone instinctively veered their eyes towards the doorway.

As the person stepped inside the room, two things happened simultaneously: Richie sprung up from his seat, chair scraping behind him so strongly it toppled over, and Eddie Kaspbrak fell to the floor, fainted.

Richie was impressed that he didn't fall ass over tea kettle himself - it took a lot of strength, more than he knew he had in him, to stand on his feet as an avalanche of scenes suddenly barreled through his mind. They didn't reveal themselves to him in any chronological order, or even in full scenes, but rather in flashes, sensations. Nonetheless, they allowed him to make up the full story.

_The taste of vanilla ice-cream on his tongue as Eddie asked him -- spending hours in his room, meticulously crafting a very short mixtape -- panicking for days and nights as he wondered why Eddie never said -- pure elation as he finally did, and kissed -- he kissed --_

Richie's Words burned, stronger than they had any other time so far, almost to the point of pain. He clutched tight at his wrist, and stared at his soulmate.

His soulmate, who was still lying prone on the floor of the dingy restaurant. Richie muttered a curse and rushed to his side, his own pain momentarily forgotten. As he had taken a moment before showing any reaction, too busy having his world turn on its axis, Bill had already moved and was tending to Eddie when Richie got to him. Bill had Eddie's head on his lap and was lightly tapping his cheek, trying to make him wake up to no avail. Mike rushed to dab a napkin into Ben's glass of whiskey, bringing it under Eddie's nostrils. The effect was immediate: Eddie inhaled sharply and opened his eyes, looking disoriented around the circle his former friends had made around him.

"What... What hap-" His gaze fell onto Richie, and he cut himself short. The two of them locked eyes for a moment. Richie was about to say something, anything, make a joke or beg for forgiveness, when Bill moved Eddie from his lap, forcing him to sit up.

"You all right there, Eddie?" Bill said, hands on Eddie's shoulders to steady him. "You took cuh-quite a fall."

"Yeah, I'm... I'm okay," Eddie answered, standing up gingerly, holding his head as though he had a headache. As soon as he was up, he grabbed something from his pants' pocket - his aspirator, Jesus, Richie thought - and took a whiff of it. "Just... a lot of memories to take in at once, I guess."

Beverly took him by the arm and sat him beside her; Richie too returned to his seat, picking up his fallen chair in the process. He now sat directly in front of Eddie, who avoided his gaze by looking down at a menu.

His soulmate.

Jesus tap-dancing Christ, what a fucking mess.

"It's all right, Eddie," Mike was saying. "They've all had the same reaction. Maybe not as strongly as yours, but I guess remembering works differently for everyone."

Mike's voice reached Richie's ears as if from a thousand miles away. Richie vaguely heard him explain to Eddie about Stan, and then something inane about the menu, but he couldn't make himself pay attention. Memories of Eddie were floating around on his head, like a dam which had burst open, drowning away everything that wasn't him.

The absurdity of it all astounded Richie. How could he have forgotten Eddie? Of all the monumental, incredible events that happened over the course of his childhood, how could he have lost the one that mattered most? True, the same thing had occurred to Ben and Beverly, but it was one thing to watch it happen and a whole other to go through the horrifying experience himself.

_A whole fucking lot_ , an echo of his younger self whispered to him teasingly, a cruel reminiscence of what he had confidently, naively, told Eddie all those years ago.

Richie felt sick. He wanted to cry, to scream, to tear his hair out in frustration; most of all, he wanted to go around the table to where Eddie was sitting, pull him up, and kiss him just as passionately as Ben had kissed Bev. But Eddie wouldn't even look at him, so he kept quiet and did nothing.

The issue was that none of the other Losers knew about Richie and Eddie. The two of them never had the opportunity to exchange good morning kisses in high school hallways, or to wear each other's clothes after clandestinely spending the night together in one of their rooms. Eddie had moved away before they had the chance to do much of anything at all, including telling their friends of their soulmate status. And, after Eddie left, there wasn't enough time for Richie to tell his friends about having found his soulmate; before long, he couldn't have done it even if he wanted to.

It was amazing how quickly they all forgot about Eddie. The very next day following his departure, the Losers had gathered at the quarry, morose spirits all around. Bev had asked them why they all looked so sad, and none of them could answer. Then Stan cracked a joke and suddenly they weren't sad at all. Only a few days later, Richie found himself sitting by the phone, anxiously waiting for a phone call he didn't know who from. When he realized how silly that was, he got up, went to his room, and didn't think of Eddie Kaspbrak again for twenty seven years.

Only now he was sitting in front of him, and couldn't stop thinking about him if he tried.

It was too much for Richie to bear. Not only he had to worry about whatever cataclysmic thing Mike had called them back into, but now he also had to freak out about his long lost soulmate? A normal person would have their brains fried with so much information, and Richie wasn't even close to well-adjusted. He had to get out, or he would do something he would later regret, like grab Eddie by the waist and steal him away, leaving Derry and its crazy shit behind.

Before he realized he had moved, he was already on his feet. The others all turned their eyes to him, surprised at his sudden movement.

"Everything okay, Richie?" Mike asked.

"Bathroom," Richie blurted, gesturing behind him with his thumb, though he had no idea if that was actually the direction of the washroom. "I have to..." Then he just scrambled off, not caring enough to finish his excuse.

He found Rose in a nearby corridor and asked her for the way to the gents, and she led him to it by the arm, just as she had done earlier to guide him. As Richie got in, he checked to see all stalls were empty before slumping on the door behind him, sighing loudly. The baby-pink walls of the bathroom irrationally grated on his nerves, so he closed his eyes and tried to gather his thoughts.

Priority number one was talking things through with Eddie, and finding out just what the fuck was going on in his head. Maybe his aloof attitude was his own way of showing nervousness? Or maybe he didn't want to talk to Richie because he was already seeing someone, and wasn't willing to give them up for a random Trashmouth he hasn't seen in decades.

The thought made Richie's guts churn. He pushed himself off the door and walked towards the sinks, leaning heavily on one, head down.

"We gotta stop meeting like this, pal," he told his reflection in the mirror as he looked back up. The smirk he gave himself looked pained, so he dropped it. He opened the tap and dampened his hands, using them to cool his neck. As he reached to turn the tap off, he heard the door of the room open.

He didn't turn around to face the new arrival, instead locking eyes with him in the mirror. It was Bill, and the sight of his face made something in Richie's chest loosen up, and he felt like he could breathe a little easier. It was an old instinctual reaction that happened whenever he was around their group's leader; Bill was here, so it would all be all right.

Of course, there was no reason for believing that Bill would be able to help him now, but the two seconds of peace were welcomed anyway.

Bill relieved himself, then went to stand beside Richie by the sinks to wash his hands. He waited until he'd dried off them with a couple of sheets of paper until he addressed Richie.

"So..." Bill turned around and leaned back on the sink, crossing his arms and ankles in a perfect picture of nonchalance. "You w-wanna tell me what's going on?"

"Well, it all started millions of years ago... There was this crashed spaceship, you see-"

"Cut the crap, Ruh-Richie. What's going on with _you_? You haven't said a word back at the table for huh-half an hour. I didn't even know you could go so long without t-talking." Bill huffed a laugh. "I thought you were like a shark, but instead of constantly moving you had to always be telling jokes or you'd die."

Richie squinted at him. "Hardy har har, Big Bill. Thank God you're not writing comedy books, or you'd be out of a job pretty damn quick."

"I'm just messing with you, Richie." Bill stepped closer to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "It's all right if you don't wanna talk about it, just know that I'm here if you ever need a-anything."

Richie didn't feel comfortable exposing Eddie as his soulmate before he talked to him about it, but he also desperately craved Bill's opinion on the subject. He decided to go for neutral ground and asked:

"What's it like, being with your soulmate?"

Bill recoiled a bit, eyebrows shooting up in surprise at the apparently random question. Then, as he recomposed himself, a smile slowly spread on his face, as if it was impossible for him to even think about his soulmate without expressing joy.

"It's... It's everything, Richie. It's flying, and knowing you're never gonna fall. It's being found, no matter how lost you feel. It's thinking you'll never love them as much as you do in that very moment, then waking up the next day and loving them even more than you did before."

Bill's speech, cliché as it undoubtedly was, made Richie choke up. It wasn't that he didn't feel that way about Eddie; rather, it was that it was precisely it. He knew he had as a child and, as strange as it was, he knew he did now. He loved Eddie, plain and simple.

Richie cleared his throat and surfaced one of his Voices, too scared to let Bill see the real him.

"Well I'll be damned, Mr. Big Shot Writer, ya sure know how ta use them big fancy werds." The Voice was gruff, and coated with a thick Midwestern accent - his Truck Driver Voice, which was the one he usually went with whenever he was trying to to hide strong emotion.

Bill only shrugged, unwavering smile still plastered on his face, though Richie supposed it was more due to him still thinking of his ladylove than actual enjoyment of Richie's vocal prowess.

"Love makes poets of us all, I guess," Bill said. His smile at last faded, and he gazed at Richie with a concerned expression. "What's this all ab-bout, Richie?"

But Richie was still unwilling to discuss Eddie, so it was his turn to shrug as he closed off that conversation.

"Just being an old fart, don't mind me." He gestured with his head towards the door. "C'mon, let's get back there. By now they're probably thinking we're having dirty bathroom sex, which is ridiculous. I never have sex right after lunch."

When they returned, Richie noticed Eddie had gotten his order, and was now going through his vegetable lo mein, deliberately looking anywhere but at Richie. He couldn't pretend the cold dismissal didn't hurt him. Didn't Eddie also feel a desperate need to see, to touch, to get reacquainted with each other, like he did? As Eddie continued to look away, Richie openly looked his fill, not giving two fucks if anyone at the table thought he was being weird.

His soulmate had obviously changed from the boy he once knew, Richie observed. He had grown taller, but was still a few inches shorter than Richie. His hair was lighter, and he wore thin-wire glasses, but behind them his eyes were the same clear shade of grey. He was lithe, skin almost sickly pale and his hands seemed dry, probably from being washed way too often.

He was perfect.

Richie was pulled back into the conversation by someone calling his name.

"Earth to Richie." The call came from Ben.

"Huh?"

Ben huffed a laugh. "I was just asking if you felt your Words burning too. I saw you grip your wrist earlier, when Eddie came in."

Richie furrowed his eyebrows. He had come to the conclusion that his mark was acting up from being closer to Eddie, like some kind of fucked up soulmate-alarm. But if Ben felt it too...

"Yeah, I did. Though it wasn't a burning, really, but more like-"

"An itch," Beverly completed. "I've been feeling it too."

"I haven't felt anything on mine." It was the first time Eddie actively contributed to the conversation, other than humming or nodding to whatever someone else said. His voice was soft, mellow. Richie wanted to hear him talk for hours.

"I have a theory, actually," Mike said. "I believe all our marks are itching, like Bev said, because of what we did that day at the Barrens. The day we confronted It. Do you remember?"

A collective gasp was heard around the table, and Richie knew the others were remembering what he himself had only moments ago.

"When Eddie kissed all our marks," Ben said.

Mike nodded his head in agreement. "And that's why you don't feel it, Eddie," he said, turning to a furiously blushing Eddie. "You obviously didn't kiss your own mark back then."

"I... I hadn't even gotten it at the time," Eddie said. His restraint slipped and he looked straight at Richie for a second. Richie couldn't categorize any of the emotions swimming in his eyes before he looked away again.

"Our bodies are catching up, just as our m-minds," Bill said. "It's like my s-stutter. We're coming back to the way we were."

"I sure as hell hope not! There are many things that have improved since then, if you know what I mean." Richie wiggled his eyebrows and crossed his arms, leaning back on his chair until it supported him only with its back legs.

"Beep-beep, Richie," Eddie said, seemingly without thinking about it. When he realized what he had done, he clamped his mouth shut, biting his lips as though physically trying to keep any more words from escaping. Richie beamed at him, a surprised laugh exploding past his own lips. His chair made a loud noise, its front legs hitting the floor as Richie leaned forward. He was an inch away from grasping Eddie's hands before he thought better of it, letting them fall limp on the table.

"Eddie Spaghetti Gets Off a Good One, everybody! The wonder boy, kisser extraordinaire, smoocher of-"

A chorus of "beeps" shut him up.

"A tingling in our soulmarks isn't all we have in common, I'm afraid," Mike continued. "Have any of you noticed anything else?" 

"Our ragged good looks?" Richie ventured.

"Well... There's the fact that none of us have children," Bill said, and by the pleased look on Mike's face, it was the answer he had been expecting.

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Eddie jumped to defensive mode, the pitch in his voice going up.

"Calm down, Eddie, I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing," Mike said. "But it might mean something."

"Yeah, it means I hadn't found my soulmate and wouldn't jump in bed with just anyone!" If the other Losers noticed his use of the past tense, they didn't comment on it. Richie, however, quietly rejoiced at the first acknowledgement, no matter how small, on Eddie's part that they had found each other again.

"Not anyone?" Richie's blabbermouth spoke before he could stop himself, too excited at the path the conversation was taking. He didn't regret it, though, wanting the confirmation. He couldn't help but be selfishly glad that Eddie wasn't shacked up with someone else. It was hypocritical of him, considering he'd had his own share of relationships in the past, but the burst of joy in his chest was undeniable, though it could also be something like possessiveness.

"There... There was this woman I met a few years ago, her name was Myra. We even got to exchange Words, but she wasn't the one, so..." Eddie finished his speech with a timid shrug.

"What about Bill and Audra, or Stan and his wife?" Mike asked, going back to Eddie's earlier refutation. "They're soulmates, with no kids to show for it."

"And me, I guess," Bev interjected. Ben looked at her in confusion, so she quickly corrected herself. "Not that I was with my soulmate, of course! Could you imagine, Tom being a New Kids on the Block fan?" She gave a feeble laugh to a joke no one else caught. "No, I knew he wasn't my soulmate, but I was with him anyway. I always thought we couldn't have children because we weren't soulmates, though of course there's no truth to that myth... In any case, it doesn't matter anymore. I left him before coming here."

There was a hardness in her eyes Richie hadn't seen in years, not even when they were discussing It. Ben squeezed her hand and gave her a reassuring smile.

"And you, Mike? No soulmate yet either?" Eddie asked.

Mike smiled sadly. "No, not yet. But I must say, whoever they are, they've been helping me from afar... Do you guys remember my Words?"

At that point he reached down and started to roll up the left leg of his slacks, where they all knew his mark was placed.

"Mike!" Eddie exclaimed, cheeks reddening once more. "We're in public!"

Everyone laughed, though Richie had to privately agree: it was pretty racy stuff to whip out your Words in public.

"No one's gonna come in here unless we make a ruckus, Eddie, it's fine," Mike said. "I've already showed them to you all once, I have no trouble doing it again."

Mike's knee was now exposed, and he turned in his chair so everyone could see what was written on it:

_Just think of me as the pages in your diary_

He tapped his mark gently twice, then pulled his pant leg back down once they'd all had the chance to see it. "Recently, my Words got me thinking. A diary, well, that's quite a good idea, isn't it? If I had to be the one to remember, then I would make sure to do it as best as I could. So I started a journal, mostly gathering facts and personal accounts about Derry's history, as well as some new occurrences." He leaned forward and interlaced his fingers, hands resting on the table. "And that's when I began noticing that the same pattern of killings and disappearances we saw when we were thirteen were happening again. I waited as long as possible, but I knew I had to call you all back."

"Tuh-tell us what you f-f-found, Mike." Bill had a stoic expression, but his increasingly frequent stutter gave away his nerves.

Mike leaned back on his chair. "I will. But not right now. I already said too much, and I have a feeling it may be better if you don't remember everything at once. Let's agree to meet back tonight; I have to go to the library for a few hours, but I can meet you at the Town House later. I'm guessing you're all staying there?"

All five nodded in reply.

"I'll come to you there at about, say, nine o'clock?" There was a new round of agreement throughout the table. "That'll give you some more time to rest, and do some catching up of yourselves." At this point he looked at Ben and Bev, who were exchanging coy smiles. Richie felt a shiver go through him. If all went well, he would have some catching up of himself to do.

Rose brought them their bill, along with a fortune cookie for each one. The queasy feeling didn't leave Richie, though he didn't attribute it to thoughts of Eddie anymore. Something about the fortune cookie lying still and apparently harmless in a small plate in front of him didn't feel right. He glanced around the table and saw the others also hesitate in opening theirs, as though they too sensed something was about to happen.

Then Bev gave a short nervous laugh and cracked hers open. Bill choked out a desperate "No!", but his warning came a second too late. Bev's cookie laid crushed on the table, and from it blood started squirting like a slit throat.

Around the table, the other Losers had opened theirs as well, before Bill's cry or Bev's cookie could stop them. Nightmarish scenes spurted from every biscuit: Mike's contained a small embryo of a bird, featherless and seeming to breathe slowly, agonized; teeth were inside of Ben's cookie, their rotting smell making Richie gag; his own held an eye, blue iris sparkling and red veins pulsing; Eddie's had a cricket, tiny legs rubbing together as if planning a wicked scheme, buzzing loudly.

Bill was the only one who didn't open his dessert, though it pulsed ominously from where it sat, intact but nonetheless as terrifying as all others.

Everyone's eyes were glued to the horrific scene happening on their dining table. Richie could hear Eddie's wheezing breath, and Bev's muffled sobs (she had both her hands covering her mouth), but other than that, the room was still. Richie was paralyzed. He wanted to run away, run from their impossible fortunes, run so far he only stopped when he got all the way back to Los Angeles. But the eye looked at him, unblinking for it had no lids to blink with, and it froze him in his seat.

Out of all of them, Eddie was the first to break away from the fearsome spell. It wasn't against his own cookie that he acted, however.

"It's just a stupid eye!" He shouted. His hand moved forward in a fist and he pounded the eye, smashing it beneath his closed palm. "It's just a stupid - fucking - eye!" He interspaced every word with a new angry strike of his fist against the table.

Richie gasped as bits of it came flying in his direction, but Eddie's action, as gruesome as it had been, gave him the courage to react. He too moved forward then, shooing away the cricket with his hand.

"And that's just a disgusting little insect," he said, pushing away not only the bug but also the fear he very much still felt. The cricket moved along on the table until it hopped off, landing by Mike on the floor. Mike raised a foot and stepped on it.

Ben threw a few napkins over Bev's still-streaming cookie, and the jets of blood were contained. In turn, Bev put a napkin over Mike's, effectively covering the dying animal. Bill grabbed Ben's fortune cookie and threw it halfway across the room - the teeth clattered as they flew, then quieted as they fell on the floor. Bill's own cookie remained on the table, though its throbbing had stopped, and it laid still.

They threw random dollar bills at the table, hoping it covered the cost of their meal, and ran for the door without looking back.

Outside, the rain, which had been falling in a drizzle when Richie first came into the restaurant, now poured down heavily. The six of them huddled underneath the restaurant's awning, pressing their coats closed and hugging their chests, the cold making a good excuse for their shivering.

"Listen," Mike said solemnly, "I understand if what happened back there made you... weary of going forward with this. You've answered my call, your promise was kept. I won't judge you if you leave now."

There was nothing but silence for a moment, the only sound the splatter of raindrops on canvas. Then:

"We're together," Richie declared. He looked straight at Eddie as he said it. "We were able to fight that creepy shit that came out of our fortune cookies because we did it together. We helped each other." He turned his gaze to the others, acknowledging all one by one. "I still have no idea how we did it back when we were kids, but I know we only did it because we were together then too. So let's kill this fucking clown once and for all."

The others parroted the sentiment, and Mike smiled warmly at them.

"Wuh-We'll see you t-tonight, Mikey," Bill said.

Ben gave Mike a slap on the back and opened the door to the taxi he had ordered, letting Bev enter it before getting in himself. Both Bill and Mike headed on the same direction, talking in low voices as they shared Mike's umbrella.

Eddie got his car keys from his coat pocket, and Richie was amazed to see there were still bits of crushed eye lingering on his hand. If Eddie still had an issue with being dirty, he sure as hell didn't show it. Then Richie realized Eddie was about to leave as well. He was so astounded with Eddie's complete disregard for their that he didn't react for a second. Thankfully, he managed to snap out of it before it was too late, and grabbed Eddie's wrist to stop him.

"Eddie, wait!" Eddie turned to him, though Richie suspected it was just an involuntary reaction to hearing his name, for he seemed impassive. "Can we talk?"

Even though they were finally alone, Eddie still refused to regard him. He didn't even make eye contact, instead fixing his gaze at the spot where Richie was touching him. Eddie winced, dislodging Richie's light grip as though it hurt him.

"I... I can't right now, Richie." Eddie was already moving backwards, in the direction of his parked car. "I'm gonna go... Visit my mother's grave. I'll see you later, all right?"

Richie replied with a small "All right" back, though Eddie probably didn't hear him - he was already gone. Richie tilted his head skyward in silent prayer, either to will the rain to stop falling as he made his way back to the hotel, or in supplication to the patron saint of soulmates to give him a fucking clue as to how to deal with his.

 

* * *

 

His clothes were soaked through by the time Richie got back to his hotel room. The sun had appeared from behind gray clouds sometime during his walk (it had been a leisurely stroll despite the heavy rain, Richie only picking up his pace while passing by the statue of Paul Bunyan out by the City Center), though the rain never fully stopped. Currently, it was dwindled back to a drizzle.

The conflicting weather confused him as much as Eddie's behavior.

Being who he was, Richie blamed himself. Nine times out of ten he was right to do so anyway, so it seemed like a good starting point in trying to understand what was going on.

Had he done something wrong? Made one too many crude jokes, came on too strong with his staring? He definitely hadn't been as forward as Ben, with his Hollywood-worthy kiss and his grabby hands, but Beverly hadn't seemed to mind. In fact, she had looked at Ben as if he hung the moon - a look commonly seen on soulmates, old and new.

So why didn't Eddie react the same way? God knew Richie himself had thrown some pretty moonstruck glances in his direction, all left unreciprocated. It made him even consider for a second that he had actually made up those rescued memories of him and Eddie on their last days together. That he had imagined lying on Eddie's twin bed beside him, feeling Eddie's soft skin as he skimmed the Words on his ribs. But his own mark itched with the ghost of Eddie's lips, as had the others', and that was proof that at least one of his regained memories was real. And if that one was, he had no reason to believe the others weren't as well.

None other than Eddie's cold shoulder, of course.

Richie dumped his wet clothes on the floor, keeping only what had managed to stay dry, which turned out to be just his underwear and t-shirt. It wasn't cold enough to make him want to put more layers back on, so he just took off his contacts and tucked himself underneath the bed's thick blanket, hoping to fall asleep as easily as he had in the morning.

That plan went as well as he expected it to go, which was to say not at all. He tossed this way and that on the bed, alternating between feeling terrified of fighting a millenary sadist monster, and feeling terrified of not being wanted by his own soulmate.

He was in the middle of entertaining the idea of being chased around by a werewolf wearing a varsity jacket with his name on it, when a sudden knock on the door nearly gave him a heart attack. He actually jumped a few inches off the bed, heart jackhammering wildly. The knock came again, more pressing this time, and Richie slowly made his way out of bed. His old glasses were sitting on the nightstand so he put them on, and then grabbed the first thing he could think of to defend himself with - a soggy, battered shoe. Improvised weapon raised high in one hand, he used the other to turn the knob and open the door.

The shoe was about to hit something when Richie realized that something was Eddie. He stopped the motion just in time, pressing the shoe to his chest instead.

"Jesus Christ on a cracker, Eddie, you wanna take me to an early grave?"

Eddie was surveying him with an amused expression. "A shoe? What, you thought a giant cockroach was knocking on your door?"

Richie pointed the shoe at Eddie. "You judge, but that wouldn't be the first time a huge bug attacked me today."

"Well, the bug was coming at me, actually, but sure," Eddie commented, and Richie just shrugged. _What's yours is mine and vice-versa anyway, honey_ , he completed mentally. "Can I come in?"

Pointing the shoe now at his room, Richie stepped aside and motioned for Eddie to enter. When he did, Richie dropped his improvised weapon back on the floor, and closed the door. Eddie had his back to him, but Richie could still feel his judgement for the state of the room emanating from him. He almost bent down to retrieve his discarded clothes, then spitefully decided that if he had to deal with Eddie's shit, Eddie would have to deal with his too, and stayed put.

The room was quiet for a minute while Eddie glanced through and Richie waited for Eddie to speak first. His resolve faded quickly, and Richie spoke first:

"So, um... How was it, visiting your mom?" Richie asked Eddie's back.

Eddie, either satisfied with his perusal or resigned by Richie's question, turned around and faced him fully. He stood tall, determined, but there was a blush high on his cheeks.

"I... I didn't go see her. That was just an excuse." Eddie started pacing around the room, jumping over Richie's clothes seemingly without care. "I went on a drive, I needed some time to think."

If it hadn't been completely obvious before that Eddie was deliberately ignoring him, now Richie had the confirmation. It stung, knowing your own soulmate didn't want to give you the time of day. But then again, he had come to Richie's room of his own will, so he chose to take that as a good sign.

"Okay..." Richie leaned back on the wall between the door and the nightstand, crossing his arms and ankles. If that was the path Eddie wanted to take, he was willing to indulge him. "What did you think about?"

Eddie rolled his eyes. "You know exactly what about, Richie, don't play dumb."

Oh, now that was just _rich_. Screw indulging him, Eddie needed a more direct approach.

"Play dumb?" Richie repeated, exasperated. "I'm not the one who couldn't fucking look me in the eye the whole lunch!"

Eddie winced at being called out, but recovered quickly. "Well, I'm sorry I'm not able to process things as fast as you, okay! I don't know if you realized, but a lot of shit has been going on since Mike called us!"

They were both shouting, clearly agitated, though their bodies responded in different ways. Eddie gestured wildly as he spoke, and though he had stopped pacing, his eyes still roamed the room, never focusing too long on one thing. For his part, Richie stood stock still by the wall, fuming but showing it nowhere other than in his voice. Funny that the one part of his body that he could control best under regular circumstances was the same one now giving him away.

_Yeah, very funny_ , Richie thought derisively.  _Absolutely chuckalicious_.

"You think I don't have a billion thoughts running through my head too? Tough shit, kid, I'm every bit as scared as you. But God forbid I try to focus on the one good thing that's happening in the middle of this shitstorm!" Richie broke his stoic pose then, reaching with one hand to push up his glasses.

Eddie's nervous energy seemed to die out all at once. He stared at Richie, the smallest of smiles on his face.

"You're wearing glasses."

The change in the conversation, both in topic and in the soft way Eddie spoke, threw Richie for a loop. He was ready to argue a little bit longer, but the fight ebbed out of him as though Eddie's calmness was infectious.

He squinted his eyes, which were admittedly behind thick lenses. "Uh... Yeah? I don't know if you remember, but I'm blind as a bat."

Eddie's smile grew. "Of course I remember. It's just that you didn't wear glasses at lunch, so I'm taking it in now, seeing you in them again." He took a tentative step closer to Richie. "You look cute."

Any last resentment Richie had been holding on to from being ignored earlier faded away completely, and he couldn't care less. Why would he want to insist on being miserable when the alternative was so much better, and appeared to be finally available? His heart started beating quickly again, but not in fear as it had just minutes before. If he was grinning stupidly and possibly blushing like a school kid, sue him. His soulmate thought he was cute.

"Lord almighty, I can't believe the day's finally come." Richie slipped into his Southern Belle Voice, his go-to for every time he got flustered. "Daddy's gonna be over the moon when he finds out ah won't be left for spinster!"

As soon as the words had come out of his mouth, Richie regretted saying them. Eddie had only just plucked up the courage to talk to him, and here he was, already joking about marriage.

Luckily, Eddie just laughed.

"Now here's something new!" he said. "I don't remember your voices being good."

Richie pretended to be offended, mouth in a wide oh and hand clasped to his chest. In truth, he knew he had improved miles on his impressions over the years; he had worked tirelessly for it, anyway. Not verbally responding to Eddie's tease, he dropped the act, sagging against the wall.

"What's going on, Eds?" he asked quietly, an echo of Bill's query for him in the restaurant's bathroom. He figured that it managed to get him to open up, at least a little, it could do the same for Eddie.

Eddie, still smiling, took another step forward. They were mere inches apart now, and Richie could swear he felt the heat emanating from Eddie's body. The only sound in the room for a long moment was the patter of rain against the closed window, as Eddie finally - finally - looked into his eyes.

"You're still you."

Eddie spoke so softly that Richie barely heard him. If they weren't so close to one another, he was sure he would've missed it. But even though he heard what Eddie said, he was still working on understanding it.

"Who else would I be?"

"I don't know," Eddie murmured. "I haven't seen you in almost thirty years, Richie. For all I know, you could be a..." He paused then, looking for the right words to express his anxieties. "A gambling-addict, crocs-wearing, nature freak who owns ten pet tarantulas and cries watching Adam Sandler movies."

Richie huffed a disbelieving laugh. "Eddie, that's ridiculous. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing crocs."

Eddie's mouth twisted as he tried not to smile back.

"The thing is, even if you had turned out to be all those things, I would love you just the same." Eddie threw out the confession casually, but Richie's heart skipped a beat just the same. "I was scared of what would happen if the Richie from now didn't live up to the Richie I first knew. But..." Eddie closed the distance between them, reaching with one hand to cup Richie's cheek. "You still make silly voices, and talk way too much, half of it in music references, and you still wear glasses, at least sometimes. Whatever else changed, I don't care. You're you."

After Eddie was done saying his piece, neither spoke for a minute. Richie was, for once, rendered speechless. He swallowed loudly, trying to rein in his emotions. Who knew this whole soulmate business could make one sappy as fuck?

When he felt he had himself in check, he gave Eddie a weak grin.

"Yeah, well. I guess you could say I was born a ramblin' man. You know... Trying to make a living, doing the best I can."

Eddie moved his hand from Richie's face to his shoulder and gave him a light shove. The action didn't jostle Richie much, for he was still leaning on the wall. Richie took the plunge and threw his arm around Eddie's waist, pulling him flush against him, chest to chest. Eddie came willingly, so Richie went a bit further, inclining his head a bit downward so that their foreheads could touch.

They stood there looking into each other's eyes for what felt like hours, but more likely couldn't have been more than a few minutes. Their breaths intermingled, and Richie felt more than heard the next words Eddie whispered:

"My soulmate."

Richie smiled and said it back.

There wasn't a time in his life Richie remembered feeling better than he did just then. Sure, booking his first comedy gig was amazing, and losing his virginity was certainly a lot of fun. Even the first time he held Eddie close was one for the books, but he was a child then, and couldn't have fully grasped the enormity of being with his soulmate. But now, holding Eddie in his arms after having waited for him for so long, he suddenly understood everything. He understood why there was such a fuss about all of this, why there were so many movies and so much music and poetry that tried to convey the very same feeling he was experiencing.

Every love song was his favorite now, for they were all about Eddie.

Reminiscing about the only other time he had been with Eddie like that got Richie thinking, and he decided to try something. He nudged Eddie's nose with his own to get his attention, as Eddie had his eyes closed.

"Hey, Eds?"

"Richie," Eddie warned, eyes opening just a slit to glare at him. He had been stroking Richie's arm, hand slowly going up and down, but stopped for a second to pinch his skin.

Richie rolled his eyes. "Hey, Eddie?" he reiterated.

Eddie resumed his caress. "Yes?"

"Will you kiss me again?"

Eddie leaned back an inch to give him a bemused smile. "What do you mean, again? I've never kissed you."

"Of course you have," Richie said. He raised his right arm, which had been lying limp beside him, and nudged his hand into the scant space between them, palm up. His covered wrist stood at their chest-level. "Right here."

Eddie exhaled with a surprised "Oh!", looking down intently at Richie's offering hand. He took a step back, and Richie thought he had gone too far, so he let the hand holding onto Eddie's waist fall. He was ready to drop the other arm as well, when Eddie suddenly gripped it with both hands. For a moment, neither of them moved. Richie held his breath, waiting to see what Eddie would do next.

When Eddie unclasped his wristband, Richie couldn't help but gasp.

Eddie turned slightly to the left and placed the leather band gently on the nightstand, then turned back around. Richie's Words were exposed, exactly as they had been when he first showed them to Eddie on that momentous summer day. It had been a while since the last time he'd exchanged Words with someone else. He and his last girlfriend Sandy had been going steady for a couple of years, but neither was heartbroken when they showed each other their marks and found they didn't match, and they ended things right on the spot.

He could easily say there was no comparison between showing them to a regular partner and showing them to your actual soulmate.

From his scalp to his soles, Richie's skin was on fire, but most of all in the pressure point where Eddie's smooth palm made contact with his wrist. It was almost too much, but at the same time he wanted to feel more of it, so he brought his other hand back to Eddie's hip and held him tight.

In front of him, Eddie seemed to be in a trance. He hadn't taken his eyes off Richie's mark, but hadn't done anything else to it either. While Richie wanted him to take his time, he also felt he might actually combust if Eddie didn't move. He was just about to throw patience to the wind and say something, probably some stupid joke which would inevitably kill the mood, when Eddie leaned his head down and pulled Richie's arm up, the two meeting in the middle.

Eddie didn't exactly kiss his Words, at least not at first. He pressed his lips to it, yes, but also his nose and part of his cheek. His eyes were closed, and he stayed still again, just breathing. Then, he started rubbing his face left and right on Richie's wrist, like a cat asking to be petted.

Richie felt a burst of warmth so strong in his chest, his knees buckled. Thankfully, he had the wall behind him to support him. He leaned back a bit more into it, and Eddie simply moved along with him, seemingly not even noticing a change, just following him blindly. Richie gave out a low hum of content, fighting to keep his eyes open because he didn't want to miss anything from the scene in front of him.

After a while, Eddie moved his face back an inch, opening his eyes in the process, but still facing down. He licked his lips, and finally leaned back down to press a proper kiss to Richie's Words. In fact, he pressed many tiny kisses throughout the span of Richie's wrist, trying to capture every last inch of the soulmark. Richie felt every one like an explosion, the itching of the past couple of days turned up to a thousand.

Uncountable kisses later, Eddie slowed down. He pressed one last, lingering kiss to the center of the mark, then moved away, a blinding smile on his slightly swollen lips as he gazed back at Richie's face. Richie thought he looked like the dictionary definition of smitten, and he had never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.

Eddie still hadn't let go of his arm, and was now grazing his thumb to Richie's tingling inner wrist. Loathe as he was to break the contact, Richie pulled his arm away and held Eddie's hand. Smiling slightly, he took a couple of steps forward, so Eddie was forced to take steps back. They both reached the center of the room, and Richie kicked the clothes on the floor haphazardly under the bed.

Eddie was still wearing the same outfit he had at lunch, crisp white shirt and pressed slacks. Richie placed both hands over Eddie's chest and reached for the first clasped button, not opening it. He looked into Eddie's eyes, silently asking for permission, and only when Eddie shakily nodded did he start undoing the buttons.

As soon as the last one had opened, Richie slid the shirt off Eddie's shoulders, letting it hit the floor without a sound. Eddie was wearing an undershirt beneath it, so Richie took that off too, Eddie raising his arms above his head to help him. Eddie stood shirtless now; Richie roamed his eyes over his chest until he got to his ribs... Which were covered in Word Tape.

Richie looked back up at Eddie's face, an eyebrow raised in amusement. In reply, Eddie shrugged one shoulder and gave a little embarrassed smile; he made an aborted motion with his arms as if meaning to cover his bare chest, then put them down again. Richie rubbed his jittery arms soothingly; he remembered what Eddie had said back in the restaurant, so was left to assume he didn't have much experience being undressed in front of people.

Of course, they had gone through this exact scenario on the day they first found out they were each other's soulmates, but everything was different now. They could have been awkward and weird back then, but they weren't exactly shy. A child has no qualms expressing precisely what they think and how they feel; being older gives one a lot more inhibitions.

When he felt that Eddie had relaxed again, Richie slowly stopped the caress. With slow, deliberate motions so Eddie knew it was coming, he reached for the tape and pulled it off.

Though he knew they were there, had known since Eddie the second walked in that restaurant, seeing the Words imprinted on Eddie's skin made some final knot loosen within Richie's heart. For the first time in quite a long time (give or take twenty seven years, he'd wager), he felt like he could breathe easy.

Some indescribable emotion must have flitted through his face, because Eddie shot him a worried look.

"Richie, what-"

He cut himself short when Richie dropped to his knees in front of him.

From his new position, Richie was on eye-level with Eddie's ribs, inches away from his Words. Unthinking, he took off his glasses, set them gently on the floor beside him, and pressed his face to Eddie's stomach. His arms went around Eddie's waist and he hugged him as tight as he could. The skin he was pressed to was wet, and only then did Richie realize he was crying.

Eddie noticed it as well, and gave out a small sound of distress. He burrowed a hand in Richie's hair, combing it with his fingers; his other hand went around Richie's shoulders, hugging him back.

"Rich... Are you okay?"

Richie's only reply was to rub his forehead up and down Eddie's middle in some sort of nod. How could he explain to Eddie that his tears were tears of joy, of relief? That he had unknowingly been waiting for this very moment for over half his life, and now it was finally here? _Eddie_ was finally here.

He adjusted his weight on his knees, tilted his head slightly upward, and kissed the Words that were meant for him.

Underneath his lips, he felt that Eddie had frozen again; his ribs barely moved, as though he was holding his breath. Not breaking the kiss, Richie raised his hands from where they were resting on Eddie's hips to rest at his sides, stroking firmly but gently. There wasn't much else he could do but put everything he was feeling into his touch, to try to make Eddie understand that he was safe in his arms. A short moment after he had started his ministrations, he felt Eddie relax, body sagging as he let out a long sigh.

Feeling more confident now that Eddie seemed to have loosened up, Richie leaned back a bit and nosed at the mark, warm breath ghosting over it. From an inch away and without his glasses, the Words were blurred and unreadable. He couldn't care less; he knew them by heart. When he settled his mouth back on the mark, he got bolder, swiping his tongue over it shamelessly. Richie had never kissed a soulmark before in his life, but he could swear it tasted different than just regular sweat and skin. It wasn't exactly a tang, but something incredibly enticing all the same. Or maybe he was just intoxicated by Eddie. Either way, he savored it, licking and sucking at the skin, his hand moving freely to Eddie's back to press him even closer.

Eddie huffed a breathy laugh and used the fingers still on Richie's hair to gently pull him away. Richie's mouth made a loud noise in the otherwise quiet room as he extricated himself. Dazedly, he gazed up at Eddie's smirking face.

"Richie... Did you just give my Words a hickey?" Eddie tried to sound stern, but his voice denounced his amusement.

Richie blinked slowly and looked at the mark, which indeed sported a faint purple circle by its left side, where the quote began. Huh. Guess he had. He looked back up and smiled, all teeth and no regret.

Eddie laughed again, hands going from Richie's hair to his shoulders, pulling him up. Now that they were once again standing face to face, Richie could see that Eddie was flushed, a barely perceptible bead of sweat around his hairline. He was smiling widely, which made his nose wrinkle and his eyes tighten, though from the open slit Richie could still see how they sparkled. A rush of emotion overcame him, and he honestly believed his knees would fail him if he didn't tether himself to something.

Arms tightening around Eddie's waist, he scooped him up and pressed their lips together.

No fireworks exploded behind his closed eyelids, no swelling music reached his ears. It didn't feel like an exceptional thing, in fact it was the complete opposite. Richie felt like every other moment of his life was the exception, and this one was the rule. Every character he created, every voice he hid behind, it was all a front. With Eddie's lips on his, not saying a word, he was finally his true self.

He tilted his head to the side and deepened the kiss, Eddie allowing it easily. One of Eddie's hands went to Richie's neck, scratching at the nape; the other circled Richie's shoulders, holding on tight. Kissing each other's Words had been great, but feeling Eddie's tongue curl inside his mouth was something Richie wouldn't want to trade for anything else, at least not any time soon.

Eddie was starting to strain from being held up, so Richie released his grip on his waist, head tilting down to compensate for their slight height difference. As he did so, he started walking backwards while pulling Eddie along, luckily neither stepping on his forgotten glasses on the way to the bed. When his knees hit the mattress, he let himself fall on his back, with Eddie on top of him. They still didn't break the kiss for longer than a second to breathe, too caught up in each other to care about anything else. 

Richie took advantage of Eddie's state of undress, hands roaming freely over his back, nails scraping against soft skin. He bit on Eddie's lower lip and stilled his tactical exploring, simply holding onto him. As soon as he did, however, Eddie reeled back with a gasp. Initially Richie thought he had bit him too hard and hurt him, but there was no blood to show for it. Eddie was looking down at his chest, and it was only when Richie looked too that he understood. By resting his hand on Eddie's back, he had managed to make it so that his wrist was pressed to Eddie's ribs.  

Somehow, without having meant to do it at all, he had aligned both of their marks perfectly.

The image of their Words pressed together, united at last after so much had conspired for them to be apart, would be permanently engraved on his brain (and, if Richie were being honest, would probably fill his spank bank until the end of time). He raised his hand so that only his wrist was in contact with Eddie's skin, and rubbed the two areas together with intent.

Eddie let out a strangled moan.

"Yowza," he whispered, voice gruff.

Richie gave a delighted laugh. "Hey, that's my line!" he said.

"This is so crazy. Isn't it crazy? I mean, not in a million years did I think this was gonna happen when I answered Mike's call. Or, or maybe I knew it deep down, or I don't think I would have come back. Do you think this whole mess was just a way for the Universe to bring us together? Though I guess it did tear us apart in the first place..."

Eddie's rambling was a clear sign of his anxiety. Richie suddenly remembered many instances of thirteen year-old Eddie exercising verbal diarrhea, going on and on about whatever was on his mind, as if talking would prevent thinking about his affliction. It was endearing, but Richie didn't want Eddie to be stressed, at least not about them. So he did the first thing that came to his mind to stop him:

"Beep-beep, Eddie."

It worked instantaneously. Eddie cut himself off in the middle of his speech, blinking owlishly, mouth slightly open. Then he smiled.

"Hey, that's my li-"

Richie shut him up with a kiss.

When they parted again, the fear which had briefly clouded Eddie's features was gone. Richie reached for his cheek and stroked it lovingly... Then he gave it a pinch. Eddie laughed and swatted his hand away; he slid off Richie and laid beside him on the bed. They shuffled until they were lying on their sides, facing each other.

"You know..." Richie started, reaching forward to palm Eddie's cheek again, incapable of not touching him. Eddie leaned into the touch, and Richie fell even more in love with him. "You're just like a dream."

Eddie giggled. "Did you just quote your favorite band at me?" he asked.

And the fact that Eddie instantly knew it, still knew him even after thirty years apart, made it worth fighting all the damn clowns in the world.

 

* * *

 

Going against It was harder the second time around, but also easier at the same time. The group was weaker to begin with, the loss of Stan breaking their magic seven, and they felt his absence like a phantom limb. But what made all the difference was that, for most of the remaining Losers, they weren't so much fighting for their own lives as they were for someone else's.

While it was true that having your soulmate with you as you challenged a shape-shifting monster increased your fear tenfold, Richie guessed that it was probably what saved them all in the end. There was obviously no way of knowing for sure, but he would bet his fur that if he didn't have Eddie by his side, he likely wouldn't have been half as careful as he was during that final confrontation. In the dim light provided by their flashlights as they walked through the sewers, he thought he saw the same certainty reflected in Ben and Bev's eyes. Eddie's hand was clammy in his grasp, but he held onto it all the same; from the minute they entered the tunnels together, he didn't let go of it once.

When he finally did, an hour or a lifetime later, it was to embrace Eddie in a relieved hug, the early morning sun bathing their tired bodies in warm light as they left the cold sewers behind, having defeated It once and for all. 

The first thing they did when they got back to the Town House was take a long shower. Eddie had a room of his own in the hotel, but he simply followed Richie to his without a word. Neither wanted to be alone yet, their presence a comfort after their ordeal. They didn't even shower together; Richie gave Eddie first go and waited for him to finish cleaning up, sitting on the floor with his back on the bathroom door from the outside, letting the sound of the water jets soothe his racing mind. Every memory he had of It remained intact, and Richie knew instinctively they would never fade again, but they didn't scare him anymore. For the first time in twenty-seven years, he felt truly, utterly at peace.

The shower was cut off, and a minute later Eddie opened the bathroom door, Richie standing up to move out of his way. Eddie hadn't bothered to stop by his bedroom to get fresh clothes, so he was dressed only in one of the hotel's white robes. His skin was pink, likely from the combination of hot water and intense scrubbing; his hair wasn't completely dry, and a few drops of water fell down his neck. If Richie wasn't so bone tired, as well as completely filthy, he would have jumped him right then and there. Instead, he just squeezed his side once, gathering strength from the Words hidden underneath the robe, and entered the bathroom to take his own shower.

During the previous afternoon, before meeting the other Losers to discuss their attack plan, Richie and Eddie had taken the time to talk about their future prospects. They quickly realized it was a no-brainer: since Richie had his disc jockey job, he couldn't afford to leave LA. Eddie was the CEO of a limousine company, and he could very well manage it remotely and later transfer his business to the west coast. Eddie, who hadn't touched his inhaler ever since barging in on Richie's room, had seemed thrilled at the idea of living by the beach. So it was decided - they would first make the drive to New York together, so that Eddie could pick up clothes and a few odds and ends from his home, and then he would put it to lease. After that, they would fly out to California, where they would sell Richie's bachelor pad and find a new apartment for the two of them. Neither had many loose ends to tie up - it was as if they had passed through their adulthood merely existing, waiting for the other to show up. Now they were together, and so would finally begin to live.

Richie was toweling off his hair in the bathroom when he heard music coming from his room.

It started slowly, and he didn't recognize it at first. Then the beat kicked in, and Richie dropped the towel he had been using to dry himself. Eddie was playing Richie's favorite song.

Richie rushed out of the bathroom, door spread wide open to aid his dramatic entrance.

"What in God's name is this, Spaghetti Man?"

The song playing was indeed Lovesong, but it wasn't the original version. A woman was singing, and instead of the melancholic tune he was so used to, there was a jazzier undertone to it, an upping in tempo that made it sound modern. 

Eddie put down his phone, where the music was coming from, and approached Richie in the middle of the room. "It's this cover I found a while ago. It's pretty cool, isn't it?"

The only response Richie gave him was to grab both of his hands and start swaying, dancing along to the music. They were pretty clumsy, but what they lacked in finesse they made up for in enthusiasm. Richie twirled Eddie, their hands clasped together above their heads; in turn, Eddie held Richie by the back and dipped him. They laughed the whole way, and Richie couldn't remember the last time he'd had that much fun.

Before they knew it, the song reached its end. They stopped dancing, panting slightly from exertion. Richie was loathe to let the moment go so soon, so he got his own phone from where it rested on the nightstand and opened his music app.

"I have a little something here as well," he said, the first chords beginning to play as he placed his phone back on the table and went to stand in front of Eddie.

The cover of Africa that Richie chose was an acoustic one, so he took advantage of it to pull Eddie close for a slow dance. His left arm embraced Eddie's back so that his hand was resting comfortably by Eddie's ribs, where his Words were hidden. Eddie gently took off Richie's wristband, letting it fall to the floor. He held Richie's hand within his own and pressed both between their chests as they began to sway.

In that instant, as they shared their personal favorite arrangements of each other's soulmate songs, Richie felt like he and Eddie were coming together as one. Two halves of the same soul, music and lyrics combining to create one perfect song. He leaned forward and pressed a tender kiss to Eddie's temple. As the chorus soared in, they both looked down at the correspondent Words in Richie's skin, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that they rang true, and they would never be apart again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and don't forget to kudos/comment! As always, you can find me on [tumblr](https://shelhead.tumblr.com).

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think of it so far!
> 
> Fun tidbit, because I couldn't find a way to add it to the story: Patty's favourite song is, as you've seen, Free Fallin' by Tom Petty. Stan's song? Learning to Fly, by Tom Petty. That's some serious soulmate business, y'all!!!
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr [@touzier](https://touzier.tumblr.com)


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